Faction Fun
by Justagenericusername
Summary: The Kidnapping of a Time-line: PART 3! So, where have I ended up this time in my dimension hopping life? Oh look, the Divergent universe! Awesome, this could be cool! What shenanigans will I get up to here I wonder? Rated for language and violence. (Find parts 1 and 2 on my profile.) -Please note this is a multi crossover fanfic-
1. Right, so where am I this time?

**Disclaimer: I own own nothing except the OCs**

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Georgia: Welcome back my lovely readers! So here we are, in the next world of awesomeness. What have I got to report today... *look of concentration on her face* OH! That's right, we've moved base since last time we spoke. We ran into a few...issues with some of the locals last week, it wasn't my fault, I swear!

Altaïr: *walks on screen to stand arms crossed* Do not lie to your readers, Georgia. We both know if you hadn't punched that _boy_ in the face none of this would have happened.

Georgia: *looking insulted* He started it...

Altaïr: ...

Georgia: Okay, look, *flings arms in the air* he was the one that couldn't take a hint! Besides if I hadn't done it you would have! *points at the assassin* You can't deny that.

Altaïr: *barely audible* This is true...

Georgia: *turns back to address her lovely audience* Basically what happened was this guy was hitting on me, and _really_ going for it too, but wasn't exactly listening when I told him I wasn't interested. I was polite and kind about it...at first. Buuut, after a while it was clear he hadn't got the hint, so I punched him in the face. *mumbles* Turns out he was the prince...

Altaïr: Yes, he was the prince, even I knew that. So we were chased off that world and had to relocate to... *tilts head at her* where are we now?

Georgia: We are just in a slightly different version of my dimension at the moment actually, which is a nice change. So yeah, that's why we moved. Not much else to tell beyond that, so enjoy part 3!

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 **I'm home! ...wait, what?**

* * *

This journey was smoother than the last and I landed lightly on the other side of the portal, to be greeted by a post-apocalyptic scene. I quickly opened my storage and re-booted my bare feet, ' _damn, this is a pain in the ass to keep doing,'_ I moaned, then stood back up to continue my survey of the area. Most of the buildings that surrounded me had falling down, it was clear to see nobody had used the sky rises here in a long time, almost all of them were crumbing down. I noticed that many of them were missing large chunks of structure and a couple were just rubble of fallen towers. But as I turned around in a circle I saw that the buildings behind me had been kept in perfectly good condition, there were even a few people in the distance, ' _so people do still live here,_ ' I thought to myself, ' _wait, where even_ _ **is**_ _here.'_

I spun around slowly taking everything in, the sound of Woodkid still playing making the scene incredibly ominous, when I realised something. I knew this skyline. That building there . . . that was **Sears Tower** and I was standing under the "L", a very noisy elevated train that I used to hate _._ I was in the city I used to live in for 2 years, Chicago. A post-apocalyptic Chicago, but why was I **here** of all places? Were they **trying** to torment me?

As I was pondering the question a mass of black suddenly rounded the corner and ran towards me. I leapt out of their way and as they sprinted past me, with the odd splash of blue, white and orange in the mix, I realised where I was. I laughed out loud, because I was in the Divergent universe. The last of the Dauntless initiates breezed past me and I made the split second decision to follow them. If I was in this world for combat training Dauntless initiation must be what they wanted me to do. The initiates climbed up to the tracks and waited for the train to arrive. As I followed them up I briefly thought about how I would have been arrested for doing this when I lived here.

We only stood waiting at the top for a few moments before I heard the horn of the train blare as it got closer and I saw the sleek grey carriages round the bend to come barrelling towards us. ' _Shit, that's going fast,_ ' I panicked, ' _I hope I can jump onto it in time.'_ The Dauntless born teens started running just before the train reached us. I promptly followed their lead knowing they had done this many times before and knew exactly what they were doing. I saw an opening in the train and leapt towards it, arms outstretched to grab onto anything. My hands snagged a bar and the side of the door, I heaved myself inside and slumped against the wall exhaling deeply, not realising I had held my breath until then, wishing I was fitter than my current pitiful level.

The carriage quickly filled up with 16 year olds and I noticed that I'd managed to land with - what looked like – all the transfers. It was at that point I looked at what I was wearing and breathed I sigh of relief. I thanked my lucky stars that I chose to wear a white t-shirt that morning - can I still call it that? What time is it here anyway? – as it meant I could call myself Candor and didn't have to explain my sudden appearance as a Dauntless nobody had seen before. I mentally rolled my eyes at the fact they identified each other by the colours of their clothes, seemed like a ridiculous idea to me.

I peered around the carriage to see how many of the windswept teens were from each fraction. Unsurprisingly there were no Abnigation, but there were 2 boys and a girl from Amity, 1 girl and 4 guys from Erudite, while the remaining 4 were Candor with equal numbers of each sex and then there was me, making a total of 13 transfer initiates. I mentally shrugged, ' _about what I expected.'_

We sat in the train as it barrelled down the tracks, wind whipping my hair everywhere. I frowned in annoyance, not liking strands of hair escaping my pony tail. It took me a few tries but I finally managed to retie all my hair in place. My hands fell to my lap as I let out a bored sigh, this train ride was longer than I expected. How much longer would this take? It was as I thought this that one of the transfers informed the rest of us in disbelief, "they are jumping out of the train onto a roof!"

 _'Finally._ ' I stood up and wordlessly positioned myself a few meters away from the open door and prepared myself to run and jump. I received a few looks from some of the others but one of the Erudite boys came over to me and stood next to me asking, "you are just going to jump? No questions asked?"

I looked at the boy shrewdly, he was slightly taller than me, maybe 5'9" – 5'10", with a lean build, dark brown eyes with very light brown hair, that was quite long for a guy, swept to the side of his face. Catching sight of his Erudite blue clothes I gave him plain facts, stating flatly in a forced Americanised accent to not seem out of place, "you don't jump, you're Factionless," before turning back to face the door.

"Right," he mumbled quietly before copying my actions, "I'm Ben by the way," he stated, our shoulders bumping together as the carriage swayed.

"Georgia," I replied politely before seeing the Dauntless from carriages in front jumping onto the roof we were passing. I looked at my new acquaintance with a grin to say, "follow me," before sprinting and leaping into the air with as much power as I could manage, silently praying that it's enough to get me over the gap between the tracks and the building. I landed heavily on the roof with a satisfying amount of distance to spare and staggered to a halt.

Seconds later a blue form landed almost face planting on the ground next to me, with a grin on his face. "I made it!" he said with glee as he picked himself up off the ground.

I rolled my eyes with a small smile on my face and snorted in amusement, "yes you did. Maybe next time land on your feet though?" His reply was cut short by a hysterical scream. We turned together to see the Amity girl sobbing from the edge of the roof, looking down the gap between the tracks and roof. Ben looked confused, but I could guess what had happened - someone hadn't made the jump. Judging by who was crying I guessed it was the body of one of the Amity boys that was currently sprawled out on the street.

Not particularly wanting to see a dead body splatted on the pavement, I didn't follow Ben to the edge. A good move I thought when Ben turned around wide eyed and white as a sheet. ' _Curiosity killed the cat, or rather in this case made the cat puke,_ ' I mused to myself as Ben emptied the contents of his stomach onto the roof. I scrunched up my nose as I walked over to him and helped him over to where all the others were gathering. We were almost there when someone called out, "sure you shouldn't be a stiff?"

I whipped around towards the sound to glare at two of the boys from Erudite, I mentally rolled my eyes, ' _of course it was them,'_ before saying, "just because I am Dauntless doesn't mean I stop being human. It's called common decency, maybe you should try it?" I replied, my voice practically dripping in sarcasm. The taller blonde glared back while the black haired boy's eyes widen slightly at my verbal attack, the latter obviously being the blonde's lackey. The blonde was about to move to retaliate when the only girl wearing blue put a hand on his arm before quietly muttering something I couldn't hear to him.

He glared at me before growling, "this isn't over," and walked away. Ben had recovered by this point so we started walking again, unfortunately being the last to arrive earned us a glare from the man with slightly greying black hair that was standing on the raised edge - obviously the leader.

He confirmed this when he opened his mouth to say, "my name is Max. I am one of the leaders of your new faction." He waved a hand towards the large open space behind him, "several stories below us is the entrance to our compound. If you can't muster the will to jump off, you don't belong here. Our initiates have the privilege of going first." His hand moved to gesture towards us, and the older members that had been at the ceremony parted to allow us to reach the edge.

The few moments of awkward silence that followed was broken by him demanding, "well someone's got to go first, so who's it going to be?" I rolled my eyes, ' _guess these lot aren't as brave as Tris. Looks like I'm taking the leap of faith,'_ I thought as I walked silently to the edge and jumped up onto the raised portion. "Looks like we have a winner," Max said stepping down, his tone of voice suggesting he was slightly . . . surprised or unnerved, I wasn't not sure, by my silence and exasperated expression.

I didn't respond because I was busy looking down to see only blackness, logically I **knew** there was a net at the bottom of the pit, but it didn't stop the nervous butterflies from fluttering around my stomach as I gathered the courage to jump. I silently laughed at the irony of 'Don't Look Down' playing in my head, before mentally shaking my head to clear it of thoughts. I placed my arms out either side of me with my legs together, bent my knees and jumped out into the darkness - attempting to imitate an Assassin's Creed leap of faith.

I felt the wind whipping around me as I grinned, shifting to falling on my back as I enjoyed the sensation of falling, whilst desperately hoping that I hadn't butchered the elegant movement too badly for a first attempt. All too soon I crashed into the net at the bottom and bounced back up fairly highly, whooping with glee as the adrenaline courses through my veins. I performed a flip on my bounce, taking the opportunity to have some fun on what was, for a moment, essentially a trampoline.

 **Four's POV**

I watched as the First Jumper fell through the air, surprised at seeing the figure of a female elegantly descending towards the net. It was usually some headstrong boy who jumped first, wanting to seem the biggest and the best of the group, and never with any of the elegance this girl was displaying, nor the complete silence. I was instantly curious about this young girl, and my curiosity was amplified when she performed a flip on the net, almost as if she knew it would be there - which was impossible, it's a highly guarded secret – with an exclamation of **joy** of all things.

I walked over to the side of the net and held my hand out to help her down, hoping she accepted my hand and not another's, as I wanted to get a closer look at this peculiar initiate. She grabbed hold of my hand grinning as I pulled her off the net. She landed steadily and I asked her, "what's your name?" She didn't respond and seemed to be deep in thought, so I took the opportunity to look her over.

She stood a few inches shorter than me, unusually slightly plumper than most, with mousy brown hair in a high pony tail and hazel eyes. She looked . . . older than 16 somehow, and there was a look in her eyes that said she knew more than you. It was unnerving. ' _I'm going to have to keep an eye on this girl,'_ I thought solemnly to myself, ' _she is . . . different, and I'm not sure if it's in a good way.'_

 **Georgia's POV**

Sadly, the bounces quickly became too small to perform any fun manoeuvres so I crawled to the side of the net and grabbed one of the many hands offering assistance. I jumped down and thanked the hand that aided me whilst I peered up to see a handsome blonde guy that looked around my age, ' _I bet that's Four,'_ I said to myself upon seeing a pair of crystal blue eyes. ' _So this is…_ ' I scrabbled to try and conjure the memories of this world, ' _before Tris, but only just.'_ I was so deep in thought that I missed his question, only realising that he said something when I noticed his impatient expression, "sorry, what did you say?"

He sighed before asking, "what's your name?"

"Oh, Georgia," I replied quickly.

He turned around and called out, "First Jumper - Georgia!" I heard cheers from the direction he shouted in, but I was paying more attention to the falling figure, yelling in fear, that had jumped after me. Ben.

"Looks like he took my advice and then some," I muttered to myself smirking as I walked over to the net to offer him help. I hauled him onto solid ground, congratulating him on at least not screaming like a girl with a smirk on my face. He shot a look of annoyance in my direction for my comment but didn't respond, probably in an attempt to keep some semblance of dignity.

We stepped off to the side and stood watching as the others dropped down into the net, but as usual my mind became restless so I start mouthing along to Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' that had begun playing in my head shortly after I pulled Ben off the net. "What are you doing?" Ben questioned looking at me like I was crazy.

"Singing. A song," I said slowly, "you guys do do that, right?"

"Erm, not typically, no. What is the song?" he asked curiously.

I looked around and saw that it was taking some time for everyone to arrive so I said, "what the hell. Sure. I'll sing a song for you." ' _It's only one person after all,_ ' I reasoned. So I sung the classic hit to him, gradually becoming lost in the music. I got all the way through the song before I noticed that my audience had grown to almost all the transfers. "Erm, sorry about that," I shyly looked down and shuffled my feet, "didn't meant to disturb you."

The redheaded girl from Amity smiled broadly before excitedly announcing that I hadn't and they would actually very much like to hear another of these new songs. I pondered the idea for a second before saying, "well… I guess I can do that; I can even do one you guys can help with if you want?" The suggestion was met with an excited agreement so I began repeatedly slapping my hands on my thighs twice before clapping, I told everyone to copy and that some should stomp instead of slap their thighs. Once they got the hang of it I burst into 'We Will Rock You', encouraging them all to join in singing the chorus. By the end of the song it had grown into all the initiates joining in happily. ' _This is crazy_ ,' I reflected to myself, _'I can't believe they lost music like this, these guys are loving it.'_

That's when a new guy, also around my age, turned up furiously asking what we were all doing. Ben bravely responded, "Georgia was teaching us some songs we hadn't heard before," tilting his head towards me. I mentally groaned, I was in the shit now, if the multitude of piercings told me anything it was that I was unfortunately dealing with Eric.

"She was doing _what_?" said douchebag asked, clearly pissed off.

"I was singing some stuff for them," I said, hoping to divert some of Eric's attention from Ben.

I saw an evil glint come into his eye, "I don't believe you," he said sternly, "sing something else we don't know." ' _That shouldn't be too difficult,_ ' I mentally scoffed, then took a minute to think of a song. "Any day now," Eric barked.

I played 'Roar' by Katy Perry, giving him a glare before I began, belting it out right into his stupid little pierced face. I could already tell I wasn't not going to like him. **At. All**.

I finished the song with a defiant stare. Eric just grunted and shoved me along the path, bellowing at everyone else to follow. He fell in step with Tobias, no wait - he was still Four at this point (I've really got to remember that), and the initiates followed behind. As we walked I took in the dingy looking corridors, lit up by dimly glowing lamps on the rocky walls. ' _Nice place they've got here,'_ I sarcastically noted, ' _very light, very airy_.'

They came to a halt suddenly and Eric informed us that the Dauntless born initiates were to follow him as they didn't need a tour, leaving the rest of us with Four. It was then that I noticed that I could only see one figure wearing orange, the other Amity boy had vanished.

"Where has the other Amity kid gone?" I whispered to Ben over Four's introduction.

"I don't-"

Ben was interrupted by a grumpy 17-year-old male, "is there a problem over there?" he asked sternly. ' _Greeaat_ ,' I mentally groaned, ' _good job Georgia, lets get on the bad side of your instructor before you even star_ t.' Before Ben could get into trouble too - I seemed to be magnet for it but there was no need to drag him down too, he actually had to make a life here - I repeated my question to Four. "He didn't jump," he replied curtly, "meaning he has no place here."

I was quiet after that, no need to make a bad situation worse. He gave us the tour, but I didn't pay much attention to what he was saying, I just took in the amazing views. The Pit was a truly astonishing sight, oh the health and safety people of my time would have a **nightmare** here. But what truly left me speechless was The Chasm, with the waterfall cascading down behind the bridge with a roar. I always knew it would be impressive but actually seeing it took my breath away.

We ended up finishing in the dining area and my stomach rumbled loudly as we arrived. I tried to calculate the last time I ate, but with the time jump and not knowing how much time had passed in this world, I couldn't work it out so I gave up. Instead I piled my plate high with a burger, salad, chips (or fries, as they called them) and an assortment of vegetables.

I didn't even realise I was behind Four until he looked back and questioned, "you think you've got enough food there?" with raised eyebrows.

I gave frown and put my hand to my chin in a contemplating fashion, scanning the options in front of me before seeing one of the few foods I had missed from my time here, deep dished pizza. My eyes lit up and my mouth started salivating, pepperoni deep dish, my favourite.

"Nope," I exclaimed happily before placing a slice on my plate and nodding in satisfaction, "now I do." Ben smirked from behind me and I didn't see Four's eyes rolling as he walked away.

Ben and I found some seats and started eating when we were surprised by the redhead girl sitting down next to me, her hair clashing horribly with her orange clothes. "Hi," she said quietly, "do you mind if I sit with you? It's just . . . the others from my faction didn't make it…" she trailed off and I sympathised with her.

"No problem," I replied kindly, "my name's Georgia, and this clever clogs here is Ben."

"I'm Sally," she introduced herself with a slight shy smile.

"Sorry that your friends didn't make it," Ben said gently.

"It's okay, I'm not surprised really, there is a reason there aren't many transfers from Amity to Dauntless," she replied carefully.

I nudged her gently with my shoulder to encouragingly say, "well you can be the one that makes it all the way to being a member." She smiled at me and conversation drifted on as we went back to eating.

After dinner Eric introduced himself and led us to the dorm, we all remained silent as we sleepily trudged through the dim hallways, not wanting to enrage the man again. He came to a halt in front of a door to say, "some ground rules; you have to be in the training room by eight o'clock every day. Training takes place every day from eight to six, with a break for lunch. You are free to do whatever you like after six. You will also get some time off between each stage of initiation."

He paused for a moment to look us over, god knows why, probably to intimidate us. "You are only allowed to leave the compound when accompanied by a Dauntless" Eric added. "Behind this door is the room where you will be sleeping for the next few weeks. There are only 10 beds and 11 of you, we anticipated that more of you wouldn't make it to the compound," he glared at me when saying the last part. ' _What did I do this time!?_ ' I sighed, ' _this is going to be a_ _ **very**_ _interesting stay…_ ' I decided dejectedly. He then informed us that one of us would have to sleep on a mattress on the floor and we were to fight it out after he left.

I started to drift off when he explained how the training would work and people questioning why we are to be ranked and then removed. I heard more questions and gasps when they were told only the top 10 initiates were kept in Dauntless, then even more upon hearing if they didn't make the cut they were Factionless. He then delivered the ominous line I read in the book oh so long ago, "you chose us, now we have to choose you."

Without another word he stalked off back the way we came, leaving a stunned silence behind him as we filed into the room. Before anyone started fighting over who would sleep on the floor, I walked over the the mattress in the corner and slumped onto it - exhausted after being awake half a day longer than normal. I didn't even bother changing out of my clothes or brushing my teeth, I passed out instantly.

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Altaïr: So, this book, it is popular, yes?

Georgia: Very popular, yeah. I fucking _loved_ this book series, I must have read all of them 10 times at least. They were awesome but I was so sad at the end...

Altaïr: What happened?

Georgia: Nuh uh. Spoilers. I'll tell you later, I don't wanna spoil if for anyone who hasn't read it yet.

Altaïr: *grumbles* Fine. Well thank you for-

Georgia: WAIT! Don't sign off yet! I almost forgot, thank you to for reading my story! Hope you are enjoying it! OK, now you can sign off *grins at him*

Altaïr: Thank you for reading Georgia's story, we have faith we will see you next time. Have a good week until then.


	2. Guns and punching bags

**AN: Georgia was really unhelpful in that she didn't tell me what the name of the song was later on in this chapter. It was bugging me that I didn't know so looked it up, thought I'd let you know that it was "Organs" by Of Monsters And Men. I listened to it and I would recommend having the song open in another tab or something to listen to while reading (or listening before you start). Hope I saved you some hassle :D**

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Georgia: Hello again, my lovely readers! Hope you are ready for another chapter of my crazy life!

Altaïr: *snorts* Crazy is an understatement.

Georgia: Oh hush you. I have a lot of things to say today. Justagenericusername has been keeping me updated as to what's going on with my story on this website that its being posted on, and I was super happy to see that I have a bunch of new people joining my adventure! First a huge thank you to Annie0801 for reviewing, favouriting and following! Second, a basket of cookies for my new follower Tris168! And third, hugs for my new favourite seg!

Altaïr: Done yet?

Georgia: *sticks tongue out at him* Yes. *turns back to face us* Enjoy my first day as a Duntless initiate!

* * *

 **Guns and punching bags**

* * *

I was woken up by Ben roughly shaking me and telling me I would be late if I didn't get my ass out of bed. I groaned and walked towards the bathroom half asleep to get ready for the day. By the time I'd changed into my new Dauntless clothes (secretly putting my old ones in my storage portal) and had breakfast I was no longer the walking dead, a good thing too as I knew what's next – gun practice. Super.

Unfortunately, I was not as awake as I would've liked, and ended up dozing through Four explaining how training works - it's a bloody good thing that I knew the book inside out, so I didn't really need to pay much attention. Thankfully my lack of concentration wasn't noticed and Four demonstrated how to fire a gun to us all after handing out one to each of us. They were sleek, modern looking guns, not too dissimilar to the hand gun I had been given a few days ago. Shit, had it really only been a few days ago?! It felt like at least a week had past since I had been abducted and thrown into this chaos. God they are assholes for doing that.

I cleared my head of such thoughts as we lined up in front of our targets and everyone began practicing. I noticed that Sally and Ben chose spots either side of me, ' _guess I've made some friends,'_ I mused to myself with a small smile. In light of this realisation I gave them some advice, "watch out for the recoil guys, it can be killer."

"The what?" Sally looked very confused by this, so I explained.

"When the gun fires the force needed to propel the bullet forwards also forces the gun to move in the opposite direction, and up as well. Keep a wide stance and brace for it and you will be fine, otherwise you could end up with-" I was cut off by a yell of pain from the blonde Erudite as his recoil hit him in the face, I snorted and continued with a smirk, "-a black eye."

"How did you know that would happen?" Ben asked with a curious look.

"Yes, I would like to know that as well," a deep voice rumbled from behind me, causing me to jump out of my skin and spin around to see Four staring at me. I panicked, I couldn't tell them that I used to go pheasant shooting with my family and was allowed to use the shotgun or that we used an air rifle to shoot squirrels that were overrunning our garden, so what could I tell them?

I went with, "I found a book about guns," shrugging nonchalantly, "I was interested." Four gave a disbelieving grunt before striding off - obviously I was too much effort - while the others just shrugged and went back to looking down their sights, this time taking up a wide stance to brace for the recoil. I smiled as I noticed and did the same. I aimed at the centre of the target and squeezed the trigger, the recoil on their guns wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but my overcompensation meant that my shot went way below where I was aiming.

"Guess you don't know as much about this as you thought," Ben commented with a smirk from my right. Very handy that he was on my right side when I glared over at him and thwacked his shoulder with my dominant arm. "Hey!" he complained rubbing his arm.

I gave him an innocent pout, head slightly tilted to the side for effect, and said in a sickeningly sweet tone, "oh, I'm **so** sorry. I really didn't mean to hit you for insulting me, I **swear**."

Ben looked at me blandly to sarcastically retort, "uh huh, yeah, sure you didn't."

I dropped my act to stick my tongue out at him, "well don't insult me and I won't have a reason to hit you, will I?"

Ben rolled his eyes in response, "violence is not the answer Georgia. At least not for everything."

"Well maybe not for you it isn't," I snarkily flung back with a grin before turning back to the target and continuing training.

By the time training was finished my shooting had improved to be a nice little cluster of bullet holes around the centre of the dummy, ' _none too shabby,_ ' I pondered, ' _might have started off bad, but I didn't miss the dummy once.'_ I looked around and noticed that nobody else had as small a cluster of shots as me and I felt a surge of pride go through me. Guess those lessons when we went shooting paid off after all!

After lunch we were led to the fighting room, as I have always mentally dubbed it, less confusing than "training room 2" or "the other training room", and Four explained how this part of the training worked. I zoned out again for his long winded explanation - that could be summed up as; train today, kill each other the following days - to look around the room. It looked a bit like a dojo, wooden planks lining the room, with a fighting ring painted in the middle and punching bags lining the sides of the room. Basically it was a really cool looking room.

With the explanation finished a few minutes later, we all moved to stand behind a bag each. Four demonstrated various punches and kicks at a bag at the front of the room, I watched him carefully while I tied two strips of material around my knuckles, thankful I remembered to find some during our lunch break. I flipped on my mental music, what can I say - repeatedly punching a bag is boring, tedious work, and picked out some music that makes me feel super badass, 'Legion of Monsters' by Disturbed is a personal favourite of mine, and set to work pummelling the bag.

Four called training to an end after a few hours and I rubbed my feet and winced, we had to kick the bag too. . . I forgot about that. We all trudged back to our dorm to clean ourselves up for dinner, I could feel that I would be sore in the morning after using muscles I hadn't touched in a long time, if ever. After freshening up I went and grabbed my dinner with Ben and Sally, who commented on my lack of red knuckles, so I told them about the strips on material and they both decided to start using them on their hands too.

Then out of nowhere the tall blonde asshole came over, ' _this can't be good,'_ I thought, cautiously watching to see what he would do.

"So… **Georgia** , you're Candor right?" he sneered.

No," I replied curtly, "I'm Dauntless. Same as you, whatever your name is."

The boy in question looked down his nose at me to reply, "the name's Kyle, this is Aaron," he waved towards his smaller companion from the roof, "and I don't believe you."

I raised my eyebrows at his accusation, wishing I could do the cool raising one eyebrow thing you always read about, "don't believe what?"

"That you were Candor," he responded simply, "none of the others remember you, not even the others from your faction, so where are you from? Are you Factionless?" he accused.

' _BOLLCOKS! OH SHIT, OH FUCK,_ ' I internally screamed, ' _now what?!_ ' I thought quickly and bullshitted an explanation of; "I was quiet, I've always known I didn't belong in Candor so made myself as little known as I could," I shrugged, "I didn't want to make a hassle of it."

At that point Ben came to my rescue to say, "yeah, I remember seeing her. She was quiet but I saw her every now and then."

"See. You are just unobservant," I shrugged again with an air of nonchalance, but on the inside I was panicking, I was going to be found out! I couldn't afford for that to happen!

"Whatever," Kyle growled and then pointed a finger at me, "I **will** find out the truth about you," and with that walked off. I let out a breath of relief at avoiding a difficult situation and thanked Ben for speaking up for me.

"You are welcome. But . . . I have to agree with Kyle . . . I've never seen you before yesterday, and I'm observant so don't even try that."

I sighed and put my head in my hands, I wasn't not allowed to tell them the truth but coming up with a plausible lie was _difficult_. After a moment I decided to go along with what Kyle said and told them in a low voice, "Kyle was right, I was born Factionless and I am an experiment to see if I can live in a faction, so you can't tell anyone, promise?"

After a few moments of consideration, and a small amount of arguing, they both agreed to keep my secret so I swiftly moved our conversation on to living in Dauntless.

"I think I'm going to get a tattoo," Sally announced, I was slightly surprised at that but said nothing, it's her call after all.

"Yeah? I was considering it but I wouldn't know what to get. I mean there is a lot of designs to choose from," Ben contemplated. "What about you Georgia? Are you going to get one?"

"Nah," I shook my head, "I am happy how I am, I know I'm Dauntless, besides, I don't like tattoos."

"Don't like tattoos? Why not?" Sally asked me, brow furrowed.

"I don't know, I just don't like the thought of them, not the mention the fact they get infected easily," I explained to them, I paused before remembering the other reason. "Besides, they look like shit once you get old and your skin goes flabby."

I received looks from both of them and Ben mumbled, "you are strange."

I responded by lightly hitting him on the arm, "hey! You are the strange one here, not me! Ya freak."

"Sure you aren't," he scoffed, "you are the one that just used violence **again** to get your point across, you realise?"

I lifted my hand again and he flinched back, "it worked, didn't it? You don't wanna mess with me any more," I responded with a smug smile on my face. He sighed in exasperation and went back to eating his dinner.

Once we finished, they went off to get their tattoos done and I wandered off to find Four, I needed to ask him a question. It was something I had pondered over for some time. These people I was supposed to be stopping weren't exactly going to stand around and wait to be caught, no they were going to run, and in my current state I would lose them quickly if they were soldiers, so I needed to work on my running. Stat. Sadly Dautless HQ was too small to do any kind of decent endurance training in, so I need to get outside and rule no. 1 was I need supervision for that.

So I scanned the dining room and found Four eating on the other side of the room by himself, I weaved my way through the crowd and sat down in front of him. He looked up with a raised eyebrow - damn I **really** wish I could do that - and I took it to be a look of 'what do you want?' so I said, "hi Four, erm, I have a question I would like to ask if that's okay?"

"Sure," he grumbled slightly, which suggested it was not okay but I needed this so pressed on anyway.

"How do I get a Dauntless chaperon? For recurring use," I asked.

Four looked slightly surprised by my inquiries before questioning, "why would you want one of those? And why would you need it multiple times?"

"Training," was my only response to his probing questions.

"What kind of training? Why can't you do it here?"

' _Jeez, this guy is relentless,'_ I exasperatingly thought, I couldn't be bothered to explain everything – especially as it would probably lead to more questions than I wanted. So instead I pondered for a moment before saying, "why don't you escort me and I'll show you?"

He raised an eyebrow at my words but nodded once before saying, "let me finish here first."

"Okay. I need to grab something first anyway," I told him before running off to the dorm. I went into the girl's bathroom and opened my storage to pull out my running trainers for the first time. It took a moment of rooting around to find them before I quickly removed my boots and haphazardly threw them into the portal, slamming it closed before anyone could see it. I looked down at my clothes, wishing I could change into something more suited for running. I wandered back into the main room and paused as I caught sight of the crate we got our new clothes from, out of the corner of my eye. I walked over to it and saw a pair of shorts that would work for jogging in, I grinned in triumph at my find and changed into them.

I ran back to find Four waiting for me just outside the cafeteria, as I slowed to a walk his brow furrowed at my outfit (he had probably never seen trainers before in his life, and as much as I had to keep time travel quiet I was _not_ ruining my feet for it) and asked if I was ready. I nodded and followed him through the dimly lit halls until we were outside, I smiled and tilted my head back to feel the wind and what was left of the sun on my face.

"So why are we out here?" Four asked coming to a halt.

"I'm here to train," I explained with a smirk, "you stand there and look pretty," winking at him before jogging over to an exposed pipe in an abandoned building the other side of the street.

I examined it and I figured it looked secure enough to hold my weight and - as I heard Four ask, "what exactly do you think you are doing?" - I jumped up and grabbed the bar with both hands, holding my breath to see if it held my weight. It did, I grinned and began doing a set of 5 pull ups.

After one, Four came around to stand if front of me, hands on hips and a demanding look on his face so I gasped out after a second pull up, "training," *gasp* "as I," *gasp* "said," performing a third.

"And why do you need to be out here?" he questioned.

By this point I had struggled through a fourth and decided I couldn't do the fifth, damn my unfitness, so dropped down then breathlessly said, "you will see soon." I sat on the ground and rapidly completed 20 sit-ups, twisting my body left and right at the height of my sits, then flipped over and performed the same number of push-ups. I hauled myself to my feet and performed a normal routine of stretches, then started the whole sequence again, Four watching me with scrutinising gaze the entire time, as silent as ever.

Once I was done I stretched some more whilst saying to Tobias, "so, you can follow me if you want, or you can stay here, it's up to you. I'll be gone about an hour either way and no I won't go far from here."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded. I selected my running playlist, grinned at Four and dashed off towards the open street behind me. I heard Four curse behind me and the sound of running confirmed that he had apparently decided to tag along on my little jog. After roughly two minutes of sprinting I slowed to a steady jog and heard him follow suit. I decided a nice jog along the lake front would be nice so rounded a corner and headed for the waterfront, roughly knowing a route to get us there.

A few songs later, yes that's how I was measuring time, he piped up from next to me to ask the same old question, "why exactly are we doing this?"

I turned my head and grinned at him, "well, I am doing it to increase my running stamina, you are here because there is a stupid rule that says I'm not allowed out here unsupervised and you were asking too many questions," I cheekily informed him.

"Why do you need to increase your running stamina?"

I mentally chuckled at him proving my point, "training to be fit in both body and mind, wasn't that what you were talking about?" I questioned innocently.

I received a grunt in response and knew my teasing was going well, "oh, so you were listening then?" he said with an amused lilt to his voice.

"Oh no of course I wasn't," I said with complete sincerity, "I was just paying attention." I then took off at a sprint, not to annoy him, although that was an added bonus, but because the song had reached a point that **needed** to be sprinted too. Not to mention the fact that the whole point of this was to push myself, and if I could have a conversation I wasn't pushing hard enough.

When I slowed down again I could see him glare at me from the corner of my eye but both of us were too breathless to comment on anything. We carried on in silence until we reached what should have been the beautiful shimmering lake . . . which of course had turned into marshland . . . I forgot about that. I came to a stop at the path that ran along the - what used to be - waterfront and looked out sadly at what the once beautiful water had become. If Four noticed anything about my reaction, he didn't say.

I suddenly had a thought and raced off to the left. ' _I don't think it's too far,'_ I mused to myself. I saw the bridge on Lake Shore Drive that ran over the gap that used to be the river, it wasn't in one piece but it looked like I could jump the gap. So I climbed up to the road and started jogging along, ignoring Four's various angry yells. I sprinted the last few metres and leapt across the rift, making the gap with ease, and finally turned around to look at Four. He was **pissed off**. "What are you **doing**?!" he bellowed at me.

"I . . . I've got to go see something. You don't have to follow; I'll be quick," I yelled back before racing off down the road until I found the familiar path to the level below. I swiftly made my way down the gentle decline, turned inland and jogged down the eerily familiar street for a few minutes until I saw my target. I came to a stand still, gasping for breath, in front of it. The block of flats I once upon a time called home - before we moved to the suburbs. You could always tell it apart from the others because its walls were not in line with the streets, they were set at a 45-degree angle for a better view of the lake and river. It was only a few blocks from Navy Pier so we could see the fireworks from our flat. I was slightly saddened at the sight of the once amazing architecture now falling apart, and typically a slow, sad song came on – My Sun by Dave Gahan & Soulsavers – which only made it worse.

I hadn't lived there long, but I knew I could still find the flat I used to live in. Our funky little apartment. It was at that point I was floored with heartache and longing for my family. I might never see them again if I was good at this job, and even if I did . . . well it wouldn't be the same, I'd have been missing for god knows how long. I had always been an independent daughter, but family was family and, as annoying as my family could be at times, I loved them.

I didn't notice Tobias until he put a hand on my shoulder, causing me to jump in fright, and spun me round to yell at me. "WHAT DO YOU THINK-" he stopped short, all anger leaving his face, I was confused why until he asked, "why are you crying?"

I moved my hand up to my face to find tears slipping down my cheeks. I didn't even realise until he pointed it out. I wiped them away and replied, "nothing. It doesn't matter," in a scratchy voice, then pulled away from his hand that was still resting on my shoulder and walked off, heading back to HQ. That was more than enough exploring for one day.

I jogged for a few moments until he caught up, he didn't say anything, just jogged at the same pace as me. We didn't talk the whole way back, sprinting if I got the sudden urge to break the tense silence.

We arrived back at the Dauntless building and I slowed to a brisk walk before stopping just outside the door to catch my breath. Once my breathing had returned to normal during my stretches I turned to Four, "thank you for escorting me today, if you could find someone to do the same for me tomorrow, about an hour after dinner, I would be very grateful."

"I can do that," he responded with sincerity, "but what happened back there? Why were you crying at a building?" I gave him a look that I really hoped conveyed; please just drop it because I'm not telling you anything, and walked away quickly. I heard him sigh as I did so and presumed that meant he would drop it.

 **Four's POV**

I watched her walk away without complaint at seeing that she refused to talk about what just happened. But I just didn't understand it, ' _what possible reason could she have for being so upset over a building that's been empty since she was born? It makes no_ _ **sense**_ _... There must be a story behind this,'_ I mulled to myself.

I followed her inside, hoping to gain some insight as to what had occurred. I kept my presence unknown, silently following her as she seemingly walked aimlessly through the corridors. Eventually she made her way to the base of The Chasm with it's beautiful waterfall, and came to a stop on the shore of the pool, sitting down on a large rock and crossing her legs. I crept closer and crouched behind a column a few meters away from her, straining my ears to try and catch her muttering to herself as I had seen her do before.

I was watching her from my hidden position, when out of nowhere she crumpled into herself, drawing her knees to her face to wrap her arms around herself, her body quaking as she sat there sobbing. I shuffled in position awkwardly, this was not what I had come to see and I didn't know what to do. If I attempted to comfort her it would be difficult to explain what I was doing here, but if I tried to leave and she saw me sneaking off it could get uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact it was not my place to have anything to do with her private life - I was her instructor, not her friend.

In the end I decided to stay put and see if she calmed down. It was a good decision as after a few minutes she calmed down and stopped crying. She sat head in her hands and began muttering to herself as I hoped. I strained my ears to hear; "fucking hell, what mess I have I gotten myself in? I go on one stupid physics trip and end up losing everything and everyone I care about…" I missed the next bit as she muttered too quietly for me to hear, but picked it up again when she mumbled, "and now I am homeless, with no stability in my life…"

My brow furrowed in confusion, her accent had suddenly changed to one I had never heard before, but why was it different? I then contemplated what she had said, _'what is she talking about? This is her home and will be forever if she completes initiation in the top 10, which I have a feeling she will, so she has nothing to worry about!'_

"…I've lost my family, potentially forever…"

 _'Child, what is wrong with you? You and your family can visit each other still; you haven't lost them.'_

"…how on earth am I going to get through this?"

It was silent for a few heartbeats. Then I heard her take a deep breath and sigh loudly enough for me to hear from my position, before she unfurled her body to wander over to stand at the waters edge to gaze over the water. Then I found myself hearing a sorrowful voice **singing** of all things.

"I am tired of punching in the wind,

I am tired of letting it all in,

And I should eat you up and spit you right out,

I should not care but I don't know how,"

I watched Georgia as she stood up and walked slowly towards the bank of the water to gaze out over the shimmering water.

"So I take off my face,

Because it reminds me how it all went wrong,

And I pull out my tongue,

Because it reminds me how it all went wrong,

I am sorry for the trouble, I suppose,

My blood runs red but my body feels so cold,

I guess I could swim for days in the salty sea,

But in the end the waves will discolour me,"

I had such a strong feeling of intrusion at that point. I could tell she was singing a song that reflected her feelings, it sounded so personal, especially the way she was singing it. ' _I cannot be here,'_ I decided, so I slowly edged away as quietly as I could.

"So I take off my face,

Because it reminds me how it all went wrong,

And I pull out my tongue,

Because it reminds me how it all went wrong,

And I cough up my lungs,

Because they remind me how it all went wrong,

But I leave in my heart,

Because I don't want to stay in the dark,"

As I walked away down the hall I was aware of her fading voice, until all I could hear was a faint sombre harmony drifting through the air.

* * *

Georgia: So there you have it. Training and a minor emotional breakdown. Sorry to end on a depressing note...it's not as depressing the next day, promise. *shakes head* I never had any idea that he heard that until he told me later on. *puts head in hands* Man, I hate crying...I especially hate being seen crying.

Altaïr: For someone who hates crying you sure do a lot of it.

Georgia: *shoots up to glare at him* Hey! Watch your tongue! Are you even paying attention to what's going on in my life? It was a stressful and emotional time for me!

Altaïr: *holds hands up in mock surrender* If you say so. *quickly retreats* (smart man in my opinion)

Georgia: *huffs in frustration and turns back to us* Sorry about that. Men, am I right? ...sorry if you are male and reading this but you should know we find you as much of a pain in the arse as you find us frustrating. **Anyway** , please review! Justagenericusername and I appreciate them! All reviews are replied via PM rather than on here. Hope to see you next time! Well...not **see** you, but you know what I mean. *winks*


	3. APRIL FOOLS!

*screen turns on. Altaïr's face fills the screen with a look of frustration*

Altaïr: Is this thing on now? *pulls back* I think it is working... *walks backwards to a reasonable distance* Right, well I hope this is working. Georgia will be very unhappy if it isn't. Anyway, hello readers. Georgia is on a mission this week and so has entrusted me to send this weeks chapter and video in her stead. I have no idea if I am doing any of this right, so I am sending it slightly early just in case there is a problem. Georgia tells me this chapter is very exciting and is sure you will enjoy reading about her second day of Dauntless training. So please, read on.

* * *

 **Instructions for funeral in the event of my death**

* * *

Hey Altaïr,

So, they finally got me. I'm so sorry I've left you alone, and that you now have to deal with them by yourself. I hope I at least went down fighting, I would hate to think I had given up and let them walk all over me. Umm, yeah so I kind of suck at this. I really don't know what to say so I'm just going to go ahead and let you know what I would like to happen.

I will miss you dearly.

Georgia xoxox

P.S. Obviously don't let my family know what happened to me. Tell them I was kidnapped and killed in trying to escape or something.

First thing is first, I want my funeral to happen in my home time and dimension. Try to get as close to the date I was taken as you can, I don't want my family worrying too much.

Second point to make, don't mourn too long please - tell that to everyone. I'm going to be really cheesy and say I want my funeral to be a celebration of my life.

Okay, so on to funeral, for lack of a better word, stuff.

-I want my body to be shot into the sun, hell yes I am serious, if I'm going out I'm going out in style. Oh and I want to be in a proper casket, none of your cheap ass shit going down at my funeral. (If it is not possible to be shot into the sun then I would like to be cremated please)

-My ashes. I refuse to share the place my ashes are scattered in with any of my family. REFUSE. Oh and I will not, under any circumstances, share a park bench with anyone either. Except my brother, that would be okay cause I'm not expecting him to join me for a long time and my ghost can be prepared for his appearance. If I share a space with anyone else I can already see the arguments happening.

-As for where my ashes are scattered and whether or not I have a park bench...leave that to my family, they can decide, I trust them.

-Clothing. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT dress me in any form of pink or floral clothing. I will come back and haunt the shit out of anyone who does.

-All ex-boyfriends are not allowed to attend, just an FYI

\- I refuse to have any hymns sung at my funeral. None, okay. Choral services were the bane of my existence throughout school. I really do not like them. My mother WILL try to have some. No. Do you hear me mother!? NO!

-Now for my eulogy. Be sure to mention my awesomeness, I leave this up to my friends Alice Baker, Zoe Newman and Mali Goller, as I am sure they will oblige.

-On the topic of my friends, any Americans attending are forbidden to imitate and therefore butcher the British accent as they frequently did around me. (Unless mocking their terrible attempts, thats fine.)

-Songs

So for songs I want played at my funeral. As people are waiting for the funeral to begin I would like Hakuna Matata playing, and then as I am carried in Highway to Hell is to be blasted out. The Circle Of Life is to be sung rather than a hymn. I would like my cremation to be accompanied by Disco Inferno and the exiting song to be Stayin Alive.

If substitutes are needed please use any of the following; Nobody Does It Better ~ The Lion Sleeps Tonight ~ Thriller ~ Buried Alive ~ Bad Day ~ It's The End Of The World ~ The Final Countdown

-Note for my family. Despite the fact that Altaïr is a walking weapon, he is to be allowed full access to whatever he wants. I trust him with my life and so with my death too.

-If my body isn't recovered please continue as instructed with an empty casket-

* * *

Altaïr: So there is your chapter for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. Georgia wanted me to tell you she will be back with you by next week and she looks forward to reading any reviews you have for her. Thank you for reading, goodbye. *walks over to camera. Fiddles with it and mutters* How do you turn this thing off? *camera falls to the floor* Fuck! *camera is picked up and Altaïr's face fills the screen again* Ah! There. *screen goes black*

* * *

 **AN: Ok so I know I usually skip the bits of the camera being turned on and off, but these had me laughing so hard I almost fell off my chair and I couldn't deprive you of this hilarity.**


	4. 3,2,1-FIGHT

**[AN: HAHA. APRIL FOOLS!** **:D Here is the actual chapter. Thanks for the review Annie0801!]**

* * *

Altaïr: *stands looking very sheepish* So it has been brought to my attention that the document I sent earlier was in fact not this weeks chapter. Justagenericusername refused to tell me what I had actually sent but informed me that it was very amusing. I apologise for sending the incorrect chapter, here is the right one.

* * *

 **3,2,1...FIGHT**

* * *

Morning arrived sooner than I would've liked and I woke up to find my body aching all over. I lazed in bed for a moment, still feeling on edge after my emotions running so high last night. I was irritated with myself for getting so worked up over an empty building. Rationally I knew that the reason I bawled my eyes out the previous night ran far deeper than an empty apartment block, but it didn't mean I had to like it. It had almost gotten me caught out and I wasn't out of the shit yet.

Still, after my little break down I had managed to get quite a lot of earthbending practice in, something I had neglected since arriving despite promising I would practice daily. I had experimented around with not having to take my shoes off to earthbend, turns out that after a heap of practice, and I mean a hell of a lot because I basically didn't sleep, I could manage to do some basic bending while wearing my shoes. While I could bend, there was a complete lack of power to my actions – and I wasn't a powerful bender to begin with – so that was something I needed to work on…

I cleared my thoughts and rolled out of bed, groaning at my aching muscles as I stood up off the floor, and started gingerly getting dressed.

"Quit groaning, we barely did anything yesterday," Ben voiced from next to me, "today is when we start beating each other to a pulp."

"Yaaay." I sarcastically waved my hands around, "just what I always wanted."

Sally snorted with laughter from behind Ben, "you defiantly have the mouth of a Candor."

I looked around him to smirk at her and wink, "don't you forget it baby."

"I got the impression that beating people up was exactly what you always wanted to do," Ben interjected, lips tuned up at the corner with a smirk.

"Hurry up in there!" Four shouted from the door; guess he had come to make sure we all got up today, weird but I didn't give it much thought. I was too busy taking the piss and walking in slow motion towards the door, Ben and Sally were in hysterics behind me and telling me to stop or we will get in trouble.

I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not a good listener, so I didn't stop until Four bellowed, "Georgia! Stop being an idiot and move it!"

I stood to attention and snapped into a salute, "sir, yes sir!" before marching off chanting, "left! Left! Left, right, left!" in time with my steps, with the others trailing behind me.

I managed to get through the sequence twice before Ben groaned, "that is really annoying, you know?"

I gave him an evil grin and replied, "I have another one if you'd prefer?"

"NO!" Ben yelled, which of course I ignored as I started singing "I had a good home and I **left** it, **left** it, **left** it. I had a good home and I **left** it, serves me jolly well **right** ," doing a little hopping skipping thing at the end to land on my right foot in time. I succeeded in getting through it a second time as well before I was yelled at to stop.

But then I caught Sally mumbling it to herself whilst concentrating very hard on her feet and I smirked knowingly as she whined, "how do you do that? I can't get it to work."

I heard Four groan from behind us before I quickly taught Sally how to do it and by the time we reached the dining area the three of us were marching along singing at the top of our lungs, with Four trailing behind scowling at us all.

Breakfast was a quick and quiet affair; as we realised we might have to fight each other so our happy mood turned sour quickly. Four led us to the fighting room and informed us, "since there are an odd number of you, one of you won't be fighting today."

I peered at the chalkboard set up at the end of the room, it was lined with pairs of names of those who were fighting that day, I spotted that I was against Kyle.

"Super," I groaned sarcastically.

"Huh?" Sally questioned vaguely, too busy looking at the board for her name.

"I'm against Kyle," I grumbled, "fuck."

"I feel your pain," Ben piped up out of nowhere. "I'm against his henchman," his despair was equal to my own.

Sally gave us sympathetic looks but didn't comment as she had nobody to fight, I can't say I wasn't grateful about the fact, as I didn't think the kind Amity girl had quite got her head around the fact she had to fight someone, which would be disastrous in a fight.

Then Eric's voice cut through the various mutterings around the room to say, "First Jumper, you're up."

"Fuck. Today is just not my day," I muttered as I walked up to the ring to face Kyle, playing 'Bodies' by Drowning Pool as I went. He had a good 6 inches on me and wasn't a small guy, I didn't know how this fight was going to go, so I needed the song to get me pumped up. He gave me an evil look and I decided right then and there to fight dirty if I necessary, anything to make sure I didn't get injured because this guy wouldn't hold back. I stretched for a moment and tried to loosen up for the fight, "today would be good," Eric drawled from the side-lines.

Kyle chuckled and opened his mouth to say something but I didn't give him the chance, having always been a fairly violent person I went straight for the offense, and lashed out to kick him hard in the stomach causing him to bend over. I took the opportunity to land a right uppercut to the face, causing him to reel backwards, I went in for another strike to the face before he could recover but he is faster and brought up a forearm to block. He swung his right fist in to land a blow to my side, then brought his knee up to my stomach causing me to gasp and have the air knocked out of me.

Before he could hit again or get me into a hold, I ducked out from his arm and moved to the other side of the ring with my arms raised in front of my face boxing style. For me, a blow to the face could be the end of the fight so I needed to protect it. I saw Four's eyebrows raised at my stance that he didn't teach us, but quickly ignored it to focus on my competition. I bounced lightly on my feet and we circled each other, I dodged and weaved to avoid his obvious strikes, aimed for my sides and face, waiting for a gap in his defence for the perfect opportunity to strike. He landed a few strikes, bruising me here and there but nothing too substantial.

"Stop playing with each other," Eric shouted at us, for once I actually did as I was told as Kyle was distracted by Eric's demand so I used the opportunity to go in for the metaphorical kill. I started with a roundhouse kick to the torso then quickly dropped to sweep his legs out from under him with the same leg. I spun round to face him again and straddled him to start punching him in the face, giving him a decent bloody nose as I did, until he threw me off.

I rolled and sprung back to me feet but I wasn't fast enough as he charged at me and floored me. He pinned me to the floor and landed a few more painful punches to my sides and a dizzying one to my face before I could bring a knee up, aiming for his abdomen but landing on his crotch. His eyes widened as he howled in pain and moved into a position where I was able to get both my feet on his torso and used all my leg power to thrust upward to flipped him onto his back. He yelped as I scrambled back to my feet and landed back on top of him to continue beating him up.

He yielded before I could do too much more damage. I got off him and offered a hand up, which he refused of course, to stand facing our instructors. Eric looked disappointedly at Kyle before glaring at me to scold, "that was an illegal move!"

I scoffed and said, "I wasn't aiming for his prize jewels; I was trying to get to his torso but he moved. Besides I'm not about to let myself get hurt if I can do something about it."

I knew I'd fucked up the second I finished my sentence. Eric had an evil look in his eyes and replied, "well then, lets see you do something about fighting Four," adding an evil smirk to his annoying, little, evil, pierced face.

"Me and my big mouth," I groused quietly. My music switched to 'Get Your Fight On' as Eric hauled a protesting Four into the ring and we faced off, oddly appropriate for the moment (you know sometimes I swear this thing reads my mind). As the music built in my head we circled each other, I could tell he was waiting for me to strike first - having noticed my aggressive fighting style earlier. I already knew I was going to lose, so when the beat kicked in I decided ' _what the hell'_ and charged him.

I saw his stance shift to take me out so at last minute dove to the floor and took his legs out, he fell on top of me heavily after being surprised by my unexpected move. I moved to shove him off me but he used the opportunity to pin me to the ground and bend my arm behind my back painfully, I struggled in an attempt to get out of it and he asked if I yield. "Ye-"

"NO!" Eric interrupted. "She is not allowed to yield; she has to learn to take a hit!" The blond gave him a look of 'are you serious' before releasing me. I slowly brought myself to my feet as Eric told us that I only lose if I am physically unable to fight any more. Was this guy serious?! That rule was supposed to come in during Tris's year, not now!

Before I could question it further Four was coming at me again, I tried to dodge or block his attacks but he was relentless and a far superior fighter than me, for every blow I stopped he landed two successfully. Minutes later, which I only knew because the song was almost done, I had a bloody nose, bruises littering my body and a split lip as I struggled to stay on guard against his attacks. I just wanted it to be over by that point. Eric had proved his point, whatever it actually was. I lunged at my opponent in one final desperate move that he easily evaded, landing a final heavy blow to my head. The last thing I saw was his totally calm face that showed no sign of regret before the blackness took over.

'WHOOP-WHOOP! That's the sound of da police!' I woke suddenly, eyes wide in surprise at the sudden loud noise, 'WHOOP-WHOOP! That's the sound of da beast!'. I realised it was just my music and quickly turned it down inside my head until I could only just hear it. I saw Four out the corner of my eye and groaned, I didn't want to see him right then, I closed my eyes against the too bright light as I fell back down onto the bed, head throbbing painfully.

"Are you okay? What hurts?" he asked, surprisingly sounding genuinely concerned, I snorted internally _'"concerned", yeah, sure'_.

"My eyes, at seeing you," I muttered, pissed off, as I put a hand to my face to find it covered in dried blood around my nose and mouth, "not that you care". I used my fingers to probe the rest of my face carefully, finding my lips split in two places, the beginnings of a black eye and a cut on my forehead, all of which had thankfully stopped bleeding while I was out.

"Of course I care," he said in a slightly offended tone, "and I know you are mad, but there is no need for that."

I sighed heavily "sorry," I mumbled and sat up opening my eyes carefully to inspect the rest of my body for damage, as I ran my fingers down my arms I informed him that his face wasn't exactly the first face I wanted to see after regaining consciousness.

Then it was his turn to heavily sigh and apologise. "It wasn't something I wanted to do, but Eric wasn't taking no for an answer."

"Yeah, he doesn't like me much," I winced as I found a pretty bad bruise at my side and dimly wondered if I had any broken ribs or anything.

Four obviously noticed my self inspection and piped up, "no broken bones. Lots of bruises and a few cuts but nothing major. I sent your friends to go eat if you want to join them?" he asked standing up from one of the two chairs next to my bed.

"Sure," I slid out of the bed, wincing at the protest my muscles made, before following him.

If he realised that I was walking slower than my normal fast pace, he didn't comment, instead saying, "they didn't want to leave you alone, which is why I offered to stay so they could eat." I gave a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement, too focused on walking without causing further damage, and he continued, "and it's not that Eric doesn't like you, he doesn't like anyone as far as I know. He doesn't like your smart mouth," he turned to give me a pointed stare and said sharply, "which you need to learn shut."

I gave him an embarrassed smile and said softly, "I'm working on it." He grunted and continued along the hall.

After a few moments he broke the silence, "I tried to catch you this morning, but you were too busy being an idiot. Sorry for snapping at you by the way, I was frustrated." I looked over to him questioningly, ' _what did he want_ _ **me**_ _for_?'

"I wanted to talk to you about last night."

' _Oh_ _ **shit,**_ ' screamed my internal voice, ' _this is bad. I know where this is going_.'

"Why did you run to an abandoned building to cry? It doesn't make any sense." He muttered the last part more to himself than to me and I could tell it was bugging him, not that I was going to satisfy his curiosity . . . this secret was too important.

I sharply told him that that particular information was for me to know, and him to never find out, followed swiftly by me walking away as fast as my damaged body would allow me . . . which I found out wasn't fast enough as Four came up beside me. I looked over at him, daring him to speak. The idiot did, saying, "look, just tell me, whatever it is it can't be that bad."

I stopped and spun around to face him. "You don't know anything about me and that is the way it is going to stay," I bluntly informed him with a pointed finger.

We held our ground for a while before he relented, "okay, I'll drop it, but no more running off," he firmly told me.

"Deal." We continued on to the cafeteria and I spotted my friends so went to head over when a hand grabbed my arm. "Agh," I gasped out as one of my bruises was grasped.

"Sorry," Four let go quickly, "I wanted to ask if you will be okay for tomorrow? Not fighting, but you will need to get on the train for the field trip, I held back as much as I could but that wasn't much, Eric wouldn't allow it."

I rubbed my arm, thinking for a moment before responding, "I'm not sure yet, let me do my stuff tonight and I'll let you know in the morning."

Four looked flawed for a split second before recovering to challenge, "you are still going training this evening?"

"Well," I said slowly, "if you have got me an escort for an hour after dinner, then yeah," he paused for a bit and told me he will find someone in time. "Cool beans," I happily wandered over to grab some food and sat down with my buddies.

"Georgia!" Sally exclaimed jumping up to hug me before I can warn her.

"Agh, Sally! No hugs!" I groaned in discomfort.

"Oh sorry, we just weren't sure when you would wake up," she explained quickly letting go of my battered body, "we were worried about you."

"It's fine," I smiled, sitting down next to Ben who returned the gesture, "you didn't know. Speaking of not knowing, how did your fight go?"

Ben gave a small groan before saying, "lets not talk about that."

"He lost," Sally stage whispered to me, causing Ben to throw a bread roll at her with a cry of annoyance.

I gave him a sympathetic look and asked, "about as well as my fight against Four then?"

"Well…" he said carefully, "not . . . not as bad as yours." I rolled my eyes at his attempt to coddle me, "after all Aaron isn't Fou-"

"So basically you lost, but it wasn't a pummelling like my fight," I bluntly cut him off.

"Um, yeah."

"You'll do better next time," I patted him on the shoulder in encouragement and asked, "so what's this trip we are going on tomorrow?"

"Oh right, you weren't there. We are going to the fence to learn about Dauntless jobs, we have to be at the train by 8:15," she informed me brightly. "Will you be okay to get on the train?" her expression shifted to one of concern.

"Not sure yet, going to decide later tonight and tell Four, I dunno what I'll be made to do if I can't make it, so I am probably just going to have to bite the bullet and go for it," I decisively told them.

"Bite the bullet?" Ben questioned, which I waved off saying it was just a phrase before digging into my dinner.

"Oh, what tattoos did you guys get?" I asked curiously, having gone to bed very late last night I had missed any chance of talking to them and consequently forgotten to ask until now. Ben showed me his "awesome" fire tattoo that snaked up his forearm, which I had to admit looked really cool, and was told by Sally that she couldn't find one she liked.

By this point I had finished my food and noted the time for when to go training as Ben interjected to say, "I keep telling her to just design her own, but she doesn't want to."

"How come?" I turned to her, brows furrowed.

"Well I don't want to make a horrible tattoo," she shyly told me.

"Pssh," I waved off her concern, "it's your tattoo, therefore whatever you decide on will be impossible to call horrible."

She smiled at me and asked us both to help her come up with a design. The three of us sat there for almost an hour hashing out ideas for Sally's body art, finally deciding on a line of flowers that snaked from the inside of her wrist to her shoulder, steadily growing slightly larger and more intricate in pattern (if it was possible). Not being very artistic I wasn't much help, but it was fun to do.

We were finalising the colours when Four came out of nowhere and put a hand on my shoulder, making me jump out of my skin in fright. "Don't DO that," I exclaimed, "you will give someone a heart attack one day, sneaking around like that!"

"Sorry, but did you want to go or not?" he challenged.

I shot up, I had almost forgotten, "yes!" I said quickly, "of course, just a second." I hastily bid the others goodbye before jogging back to the room to get changed.

By the time I got back it was clear Tobias had explained what was going on as the earlier looks of confusion had vanished from the younger teen's faces. Four saw me as I entered and walked over to tell me, "I couldn't find anyone willing on such short notice so you've got me again."

"Oh," I said slowly, pausing for a moment, "if it's a problem I don't have to-"

He cut me off saying, "consider it payment for your injuries," in a tone of voice that said it wasn't up for discussion. I shrugged in compliance as we got outside, I took a second to come to the decision to take it easy and skip the muscle work, or at least not start with it given how sore I was. So I set off in a random direction at a brisk power walk, Four close on my heels, starting up my mental music as I went.

It was a good 15 minutes before I started a slow jog for 10 and then back to power walking. It was only at this point Four asked how I was doing. "I'm good," I responded happily, "it's painful but nothing I can't handle if I grit my teeth. I'll make the trip tomorrow."

He looked at me sceptically before abruptly saying, "okay," and dropped the subject. I mentally shrugged and continued the jog, the lack of conversation would have been bothering me if it wasn't Four jogging with me, so I didn't try to break the silence.

 **Four's POV**

I lightly jogged alongside Georgia, deep in thought. I was frustrated and irritable that morning after spending the night attempting to explain her strange actions from the day before. What did they tell me about her? There was obviously something different about this girl and I was incredibly concerned about the security of Dauntless. There were so many anomalies surrounding her. Was there something she wanted? Is that why she was here? I didn't trust her. She had a strange way of fighting, a style I had never seen before, as well as a strange accent I could not place. Did this mean she was from outside the fence? I had so many questions, no answers and a growing feeling of concern.

I looked over at her as we briskly walked along the streets, ' _she doesn't even look like she belongs here,_ ' I noticed agitatedly. ' _She sees things with expressions that don't match what's in front of her. What is she seeing?'_ The more I thought about her the more agitated I became.

Finally, I couldn't take it any longer, I knew I said I wouldn't press about yesterday, so I tried for a different angle. 'How old are you?" I asked.

She looked bewildered for a moment before saying, "sixteen, as you know." I watched her intently as she said this, she was lying. Her eyes were shifting around and there was a slight hesitation in her voice.

"Why are you lying to me?" I demanded.

She flinched and I knew I'd caught her out. "Because I can't tell you my actual age," she replied guiltily.

"Why not?" I was tired of playing this game and I wanted answers.

"I can't tell you that either," she countered. I could feel my frustration building again and it took a lot not to shout at her.

"This is ridiculous," I said tightly through my clenched jaw, "I know you are lying to me so just tell me the truth!" I watched her contemplate what I said for a few moments, she opened her mouth a few times as if to say something before closing it again. I tried to pry an answer out of her by saying, "please, I just want to know that you aren't a threat."

This seemed to get through to her as she answered with a sigh, "what do you want to know, I'll answer what I think I can."

Her answer didn't make much sense to me but I would take what I could get at this point so asked, "you real age, what is it? Where are you from? Because you're certainly not from around here. And is Georgia even your real name?"

She looked at me angrily to snap, "yes, Georgia is my real name, I didn't lie about **everything** you know."

"Well how am I meant to know that?" I exclaimed.

She looked at the ground, muttering to herself as we walked for a moment before looking back up and saying, "I'm nineteen." My eyes widened slightly at that, she was two years older than me and yet attempted to pass herself off as 16, no wonder I was suspicious. Before I got the chance to ask her anything else she jumped in to tell me, "and I wasn't really Candor either, I can't tell you where I'm really from so don't even ask, just know that I am not here to hurt anyone or take over anything, I'm simply here to learn how to be Dauntless. Now can we **please** drop this and finish the jog?" she urged, clearly irritated.

I noticed that she had slipped back into her strange accent, but didn't press. I could tell that she was telling the truth about her intentions and I didn't want to push her further after earlier today, her black eye was starting to come through and I could tell she would feel it tomorrow. I felt guilty about that as I should have held back more, but instead I let my frustration over her come out during the fight. So I simply nodded in agreement and we went back to silently walking along.

 **Georgia's POV**

As we lazily jogged along I watched Four carefully, hoping he wouldn't suddenly ask another random question. I really didn't want to tell him anything, but realised he wasn't about to drop the subject when he said he was concerned about security. So I begrudgingly told him the bare minimum to placate him. ' _He_ _ **cannot**_ _find out the truth,'_ I thought determinedly.

We arrived back at the HQ and I stretched for a moment, Four watching some stretches I do curiously and mirroring my movements. I attempted a sit up, but found that the large bruise on my torso was too painful to complete even one, so moved on to push-ups. Finding I could manage those I finish a set of 10 and inform Four I was done, not even attempting any pull ups. I was sore as we walked back inside, but a good kind of sore and I knew I can make the trip tomorrow. I thanked Four and headed back to the bedroom to shower and change into PJs. Knowing I needed to heal and had to be up in 11 hours, I dove for my mattress on the floor and fell asleep listening to some sleep inducing music.

* * *

Altaïr: I hope you enjoyed the actual chapter. Please come back next week, I promise this won't happen again!


	5. Just a normal field trip: take two

Georgia: Hello again! Don't worry cause I am back! As you can see *gestures around her* there is no Altaïr this week, and actually you probably won't see him for a while as he is currently in the dog house.

Altaïr: *distant voice* For the last time, I am not a dog!

Georgia: *calls to somewhere to our right* Be quiet! You might as well be! I'm having to train you like one! Now I suggest you stop talking or you know what will happen... *pauses and waits. silence follows* Good doggie. *turns back to us* Now, as I was saying, Altaïr is in trouble for his little...mishap last week. I was very disappointed to hear that he messed up my simple instructions and sent the wrong document. Justagenericusername refused to tell me what he actually sent but assured me it was very amusing and she has decided to keep the chapter up.

Altaïr: Don't tell her Justagenericusername!

Georgia: *glares to her left* Sorry, but do you **want** to sleep in a bed tonight?!

Altaïr: *barely audible* Yes.

Georgia: Then be silent! *turns back to face forward* Anyway, at least some good came from this, I would like to thank Storywriter905 for following, and Angel1D98 for both favouriting and following! Altaïr sends hugs your way, as much as he doesn't particularly want to. I would send Four's hugs but sadly I cannot ask him to, so apologies for that, Mr I-can't-follow-simple-instruction's will have to do. Now, without further ado, the next chapter!

* * *

 **Just a normal field trip: take two**

* * *

I woke earlier than I should, everyone around me was asleep still, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that it was 5am. ' _Why the hell am I awake?_ ' I mentally whined, ' _I wanted to get more sleep tonight,'_ that's when I noticed the bloody stain on my sheets and groaned aloud quietly, it was **that** time once again. I slid out of bed, wincing at how sore my body was, and went to the bathroom to open my storage without prying eyes.

I quickly took out what I needed and dealt with what needed doing as quietly as I could, thankful we weren't fighting that day as the first day cramps were always the worst. They often rendered me useless for a few hours, sometimes multiple times a day, that coupled with my bruising from yesterday meant I would've had no chance at fighting well. Feeling the beginnings of such pain, I chugged some painkillers and trudged back to bed grumpily, hoping to catch a few more hours of sleep.

I opened my eyes after about an hour of light dozing, ' _guess I'm not sleeping any more tonight,'_ I complained to myself as I got dressed and left the room silently. I switched my sleep playlist to something a bit more exciting and upbeat as I wandered aimlessly through the halls looking for something to do. As I found myself at The Chasm 'Thriller' started playing in my head, I came to a decision on some entertainment and beamed whilst taking up a position on the bridge. Then I began to sing and dance my bad mood away.

 **Four's POV**

I woke early from a restless nights sleep after being unable to keep my mind silent. What Georgia had told me kept running through my head, she said that she meant no harm, but she had already lied, so what was stopping her doing so again? I wanted to believe her, but I just couldn't bring myself to just yet, there were still too many unknowns, like how she knew how to fight, only Dauntless were taught that.

I saw that it was 6:30, ' _I'm not getting any more sleep, so might as well get up,'_ I judged as I hauled myself out of bed and tugged on some clothes. ' _I'll go get some training done and let some frustration out,'_ I decided as I walked through the halls. As I approached The Chasm I heard a distinctly accented voice singing and instantly knew who was responsible.

"Goodbye Mr. A . . .

. . . If life is subtraction. . .

. . . Your love is a fraction,

It's not adding up…"

' _What a strange thing to sing,_ ' I thought as I heard her. It made even less sense when I got closer and the the words became clearer;

"Goodbye Mr. A

Goodbye Mr. A"

' _Who is Mr A? Why is she singing about him_?'

"Goodbye Mr. A,

The world was full of fun until you opened my eyes,

Goodbye Mr. A,

Wish you hadn't pulled my mind and killed the surprise,"

I rounded the corner as the last line was sung, finding myself greeted with the sight of the oddity that had been frustrating me, singing and dancing on the bridge over the chasm.

"Goodbye Mr. A,

You promised you would love us, but you knew too much,

Goodbye Mr. A

You had all the answers but no human touch.

If life is subtraction,

Your number is up,

Your love is a fraction,

It's not adding up…"

I shook my head at this strange young woman. She was clearly enjoying herself but it was amusing to watch her none the less, the dancing . . . left something to be desired, even if she was just doing it for fun. She stopped moving for a while so I cleared my throat to announce my presence and I saw her jump up in surprise. ' _She obviously wasn't expecting an audience,_ ' I thought amusedly.

She spun around and placed her hands on her hips to sternly tell me, "what did I tell you about sneaking up on people? You seriously will make someone die of fright one day!"

"Well maybe you should be more observant," I said raising my eyebrow whilst walking over to her. She glared at me but said nothing, instead waving me on and sitting down on the bridge, looping her arms over the railing with her legs dangling over the water. "What are you doing up so early? You are supposed to be recovering aren't you?" I inquired, taking a seat next to her.

"The same could be asked of you," she told me, giving me a withering look.

"I couldn't sleep, but I'm not recovering from losing a fight," I replied meaningfully.

She scoffed and scathingly asked me, "and didn't you think that maybe **I** couldn't sleep either?" I shrugged in response and looked out into the space in front of me. We didn't say anything for a while and Georgia clearly got bored so started humming a tune I didn't recognise, humming that turned into quiet singing. Yet another thing I found suspicious about her, she managed to sing songs I had never heard before out of nowhere and seemed to sing them word for word.

"What are you humming?" I asked, genuinely curious, "and where did you hear it? Oh, and who is Mr A?"

She rolled her eyes, "Jeez. So many freaking questions. Mr A is just a person from a song, also I don't know, I just picked it up at some point," she shrugged, "and I think its called Junkie XL or something, maybe Tris, or was it Ellie Goulding…" She trailed off before rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment saying, "yeah, I don't remember, I just liked the song."

I laughed at her and she slapped my arm with the back of her hand to stop me, so I didn't comment further. She seemed irritable today. So I politely excused myself to go and get on with some training, I stood up and told her I'd see her for the trip later as I walked off.

 **Georgia's POV**

I waved offhandedly at Four as he walked off, not bothering with a goodbye as I didn't particularly care what he did. I could tell he didn't trust me still, but frankly I'd given up caring. He wouldn't be satisfied until he heard the truth and that was **never** going to happen, so I had given up trying to gain his trust. It's not like it mattered. It's not like I was going to be around much longer.

I sat there listening to music for a while, losing myself in the sounds to block out any thoughts, until I heard others moving around me. ' _Must be breakfast time,'_ I figured, so headed off back to the dorm to clean my teeth and sort myself out for the day.

I was greeted by Ben and Sally as I walked through the door and smiled in response. It was nice to make friends, even if I wouldn't be around for very long . . . at least I didn't think it will be very long, I had no idea what they had got planned for me. It frustrated me that I knew so little about my future that I couldn't even plan my life one measly day in advance, because I didn't even know if I would be in the same freaking dimension!

We got got ready for the day and then headed out the room for breakfast. The other two were animatedly discussing our field trip and debating where we were going as we walked through the sloped corridors. I stayed quiet as it wasn't something I wanted to discuss, at all. "Why are you so quiet this morning?" Ben questioned.

"I **hate** field trips," I venomously spat out.

Sally flinched slightly, startled by my response, "why? Field trips are great fun!"

I heavily sighed, "lets just say my last field trip experience **really** didn't end well…"

"Why? What happened?" she probed.

I turned my head to look at her and flatly said, "I lost everything I ever cared about, that's what."

Both their eyes widened in shock at my blunt statement, but thankfully they took the hint and changed the topic to breakfast. I still stayed out of the conversation though. I couldn't help but feel that this field trip was going to end equally as badly as my last… I shook myself out of my thoughts, and attempted to ward away the growing sense foreboding while engaging in my usual morning routine with the others.

We arrived at the train line at 8:15 on the dot to see Four waiting for us by the tracks, along with all the other transfers. It was less than a minute later that I heard the horn of the train and we all prepared to jump on. I felt the wind blow on my face as it barrelled past me and everyone else ran to the train but I hesitated. I didn't know why I was feeling so strongly about this trip but something was telling me to not get on that train. I ignored it and jumped on with the others. I mean, there was no unstable experiment this time, it was just a fence and it was fine when Tris went in the book, so what's the worst that could happen?

My brain fired back with a number of terrible scenarios as I landed in the train, my body protesting at so much movement when it was trying to heal itself, but I did my best to ignore the incidents running through my mind. So I lay down on my back to soothe my aching body while trying to block out the nagging thoughts in my brain with some really loud mental music. I received some strange looks as I was going to the back of the carriage where nobody else was, but I ignored them and closed my eyes once I settled down. Phil Collins' 'In The Air Tonight' came on and I lay there listening to the music and playing the air drums when they came on.

"What are you doing?" I heard as the song came to an end. I cracked open an eye, it was Ben hovering over me.

"Listening to music in my head," I reply without really thinking what was coming out of my mouth, as 'Gimme More' by Britney Spears came on and I was too interested in the song. "I'd suggest leaving me alone cause I'm in a bit of a bad mood," I bluntly told him.

"Erm, okay," he gave me a strange look, shrugged and left me to it, which I was grateful for as the knot of anxiety in my stomach still needed to go away. I closed my eyes again and concentrated on the beat. The chorus kicked in and I couldn't help it, I started dancing whilst lying on the floor, mouthing the lyrics as I went.

Now, those of you that know the song know that dancing whilst lying down to this will lead to some slightly . . . provocative dance moves, complete with hip rolling etc. As the song went on I became less and less aware of my surroundings and danced in such a manner. Forgetting I had an audience.

"What on earth are you **doing**?" a loud voice demanded from above me as the song ended. "Do you know what you look like?"

I abruptly sat up and my eyes flew open to see Four, with an embarrassed red flush on his face, standing over me. ' _Oh shit,'_ my internal voice cursed, suddenly remembering there were people around me, ' _you_ _ **idiot**_ _Georgia. What were you thinking?!'_

"I was dancing," I informed him feeling my own blush creeping over my face.

"Could you . . . not," he hesitantly asked, "at least . . . not in such a manner?"

"Erm. Yeah. Sure," I managed to stutter out, thoroughly embarrassed at being seen dancing like that when I **wasn't** drunk to the point I didn't care anymore.

He nodded at me before walking off as I sunk back to the ground in despair, closing my eyes and groaning at my misfortune. I quietly lay there and listened to music that didn't invoke singing or dancing until I felt the train slowing down beneath me. I stood up when it came to a stop and followed the group out to be greeted by numerous open fields. I took a deep breath of the fresh air and smiled at the sight. I grew up a country girl and had always preferred looking out at open fields than being surrounded by buildings, I'd missed views like this stuck inside Dauntless HQ.

It would have been a beautiful view as far as the eye can see, had it not been for the chain link fence topped with menacing barbed wire that surrounded the city. Kinda ruins the scenery, you know? And the armed guards dotted along the perimeter didn't exactly help matters either.

"Follow me," Four said from not far away and walked off towards a large gate in the fence. We trailed behind as Four explained that if you finished at a low rank you would probably end up on fence duty and there would be very little potential for advancement. I knew this already and so paid more attention to my surroundings, when suddenly I was not seeing the grassy view properly any more.

I heard a warning siren sound in my head and I could feel my eyes glaze over as an image of a map overlaid the scenery. It was pretty cool if I was honest, but I only realised that after I had a moment of confusion and brief panic at the new experience. The semi-transparent map showed two dots, one blue one in the centre and a red one towards the bottom right. A second later text showed up, scrolling along the top of my "map" in my vision, informing me that an unauthorized time portal had been opened in my area.

' _Guess it's time to work for a living,'_ I thought comically to myself before turning to Ben and whispering, 'if Four asks where I've gone, tell him I've gone to the toilet or something."

"Wait, what?" Ben whispered back thoroughly confused, but I barely heard him because at the end of my sentence Four had turned his back to face away from us. So I swung around and did a runner towards the red dot that relocated on the map as I moved, it seemed that the portal was quite a distance from my current position so I decided to catch a train.

I quickly headed back to the rail line before anyone spotted me. As I got closer to where we had been dropped off the train started leaving, so I sprinted parallel to the tracks to catch up to one of the rapidly accelerating carriages. ' _Shit, c'mon Georgia, put your back into it,'_ I chastised myself as I willed my feet to move faster. I caught up with the train and grabbed onto it and hauled my gasping arse into the carriage. But I didn't bother getting in properly because I saw that I was rapidly closing in on the dot.

As I hung onto the door of my fast moving transportation, I watched the fields zip past me whilst trying to regain my breath. I was frustrated at the situation I found myself in - hell even my hair blowing in my face from the wind was pissing me off – I mean, I had to sneak off and potentially blow my cover for this when it might not even be anything important. ' _I just_ ** _knew_** _something would go wrong on this stinking field trip,'_ I angrily brooded to myself. ' _I_ _ **hate**_ _field trips; it seems every single one I go on now is doomed for_ _ **something**_ _to fuck it up for me. I should really listen to my gut feeling next time…'_

A minute or so of 'Hanging On' by Ellie Goulding later – I was very aware of the irony of the Divergent based song randomly playing - I saw the illegal portal closing in that stood about the length of a football field from the tracks. I leapt off the train, all thoughts of my battered body forgotten at the prospect of an intruder, and started casually walking towards the offending sight. I had to pretend to be the unimportant teenage girl I looked like. As I got close enough to be heard I shouted towards the futuristic looking person, "hey! You look a bit lost, do you need any help?"

The man that looked to be in about his 50s turned around, he was tall and slim with short white hair and glasses covering a pair of intelligent looking blue eyes. His clothes were obviously not from around here, and looked like they were made entirely of Kevlar - or at least some very flexible Kevlar, as it moved with his body as he spun to see me standing there. I did my very best to look innocent.

"Erm, well, actually, yes, I could do with some assistance if you wouldn't mind," he stammered, obviously not anticipating seeing someone this soon after a jump. "I'm looking for a boy and girl, around your age actually, they are in Dauntless too, their names are Tris and Four."

' _So, looks like I got myself a time changer here,_ ' I determined whilst attempting to keep my face blank, ' _there aren't many reasons to be after those two particular people as a time traveller…'_ I was instantly suspicious of him. This wasn't just a curious scientist if he was seeking people, he had an agenda. "Actually yeah, I know where to find them," I answered him carefully.

"You do? Good, good," the man enthusiastically smiled.

"Follow me," I said turning and walking back to the fence, best to head for other people if this got messy… Not that this guys looked like he would give me any grief. "Why do you need them? They haven't done anything wrong have they? We were only taking a field trip to The Fence," I fed him my lies and watched him lap them all up.

"Oh no, they aren't in trouble, I just need to speak to them about something. Are you in Tris' class?"

"No, I'm on Fence duty, I'm taking a break right now so decided to go for a walk. But why do you need them? Tris is only an initiate at the moment."

"I am not at liberty to discuss that information," he said after hesitating slightly.

'" _Not at liberty", yeah, I bet you aren't - maniac, you probably want them to help you take over the world or something,'_ I mentally scoffed. After a while I asked, "what was that swirly thing you stepped out of?"

He looked worried at that, guess he wasn't supposed to be seen portalling either, and replied, "you saw that, huh? Well I'm afraid I can't tell you that either."

I paused for a moment and decided, ' _I've had enough of this now_.' "Ok," I said determinedly, "lets cut the crap. I know exactly what that was and why you are here." I spun around to face him with my hand stuck out to stop him, "you need to go home, sir."

He looked very shocked at this, "what are you talking about? What do you know?"

"Stop playing games mister, I don't have time for it. You need to go back to your own time. You are not changing anything or anyone here to suit your own needs."

"What – but - how?" he stammered, "who **are** you?" It is at this point I was very grateful for my bruised and cut face - the swelling made it difficult to identify me, and it meant he couldn't give a good description of me to anyone, especially as my hair wasn't in its usual bun or ponytail that day.

"That is none of your concern, what is your concern is going through the next available portal home," I asserted, giving him a glare.

"You think you can make me?" he challenged, but I was having none of it.

I crossed my arms and continued glaring at him, "you know I am Dauntless, therefore you know damn well that I can make you should I need to. I was warned about you coming and told to keep an eye out. You know you are no match for me." Not strictly true as I was only an initiate, but he didn't know that…

He sighed in defeat and his previously tense body slumped. "You are right of course, but I don't know when the next portal will be."

"Then I will wait with you until you go through it."

"But what am I to say to my superiors? They expect results," he dramatically waved his hands around to try and emphasise his point.

I snorted. "Not my problem mate."

He sighed again and sat on the ground in defeat, muttering to himself. I didn't say anything, just shifted my weight to one foot and continued guarding him. ' _This isn't so hard. If nerdy scientists are all I have to deal with, I think I've got this gig sorted, training or no training_.'

We waited for about 45 minutes, me getting gradually more and more restless as time went on as I hoped my class hadn't bailed without me, but the longer we hung around the more likely it was that they had done so. I hummed or lip sang to myself to keep occupied most of the time, until the portal finally showed up and I sent him back through. He apologised to me, telling me he was just following orders. I waved his apologies off, I knew that and couldn't bring myself to blame him for getting in my way, after all I was doing the same as him. I explained to him that he cannot say anything about me because I do not exist to anyone anywhere, before bidding him goodbye as he stepped through the portal.

I smiled to myself, ' _a job well done I would say,'_ I happily determined whilst turning around and jogging back to the others at The Fence. It didn't take long until I was back at the fence, and saw my classmates frantically searching around for something. ' _I don't remember this in the book,'_ my brow furrowing in confusion and agitation, I'd had enough surprises for one day.

"There you are!" I heard being yelled from my right. Walking along The Fence was a **very** angry looking Four. ' _Oh shit. I've fucked up again.'_ "Where have you been?" he yelled.

My mind went blank. I had no ideas for a decent excuse for this. I stammered out, "I went to the toilet, and I got a bit lost."

"What do you mean you got a bit lost?" he shouted. "You were gone for almost an hour!" I muttered apologies, but he ignored them, "get your ass on that train now. You have caused me a lot of unnecessary hassle by disappearing, and expect to be punished for creating this mess."

I mutely nodded and scurried away. Four was **scary** when he was pissed off. You forget how scary he could be in the books because they were from Tris' perspective, and he loved her. I needed to stop pissing this guy off or it was going to come back and bite me in the arse before too long, if today wasn't that day.

Everyone clambered onto the train after me as I had flat out sprinted back in an attempt to get away from our cheesed off instructor. Once inside I went and leaned against a corner of the carriage, hoping to avoid everyone, but alas Ben and Sally came over as soon as they boarded to accusingly ask where the hell I had been.

The train lurched forward and we had to catch ourselves so we didn't end up on our asses before I replied sharply, "I don't want to talk about it." I was pissed off. Pissed off at the stupid company for getting me into this shit. I shouldn't be here. I was like that scientist; I didn't belong here any more than he did. I didn't want to be here, surrounded by ghosts but with only strangers for company. **I** should have been going back to my own time too! Back to where I **belong**. Where I had a **life**.

"You can't not talk about it! You were gone for an hour! Where did you go?" Sally pressed.

I am sorry to say that I snapped. At friendly little Sally. "Why do you lot always have to question everything? I said I **don't. Want. To. Fucking! Talk! About it!"** I savagely bellowed out, my volume growing with each word until I was loud enough for the whole carriage to hear clearly.

Everyone turned to look at me. I couldn't take it. All the prying eyes. All the questions. All the secrets. I became overwhelmed. I surged to my feet and bolted to the door. I knew I couldn't run away again, so instead hauled myself up onto the roof of the train leaving behind surprised questions of, "what are you doing?" and "where are you going?" Four came over shouting to try and stop me, but I was too quick for him and his hands grazed passed my dangling legs he was attempting to grip.

Once I got onto the roof and found a secure position to stand, I noticed that my body was shaking in anger and there were tears in my eyes. I was boiling mad and couldn't seem to calm down. I took a few seconds to take some deep breaths when Tinie Tempah's 'Written in the Stars' came on. After a moment I found myself belting out the lyrics in an attempt to disperse some of my rage, which kind of worked as a lot of the lyrics struck a chord with me and where I was at the time.

Unfortunately, I could feel that I would still snap at someone if they said the wrong thing to me, there was still too much rage, and I didn't want to piss off any more people than I already had. I needed to scream out some rock, so I mentally flipped through my playlist to play 'House Of Wolves' by Bring Me The Horizon, and let every ounce of anger out that I felt towards the company that stole my life from me as I could manage.

"…When you die, the only kingdom you'll see

Is 2 foot wide and 6 foot deep

Yeah!

And when you die, the only kingdom you'll see

Is 2 foot wide and 6 foot deep

And when you die, the only kingdom you'll see

Is 2 foot wide and 6 foot deep, oh!

Brick by brick by brick

Brick by brick by brick

Brick by brick by brick

These walls begin to cave in

The house of wolves you built

Whispers in a thousand tongues

Brick by brick by brick

These walls begin to cave in

The house of wolves you built

Will burn just like a thousand suns

You said you want me

Now I'm here, now I'm here, now I'm here

You said you want me

Now I'm here, now I'm here, now I'm here."

As the song finished we came up on Dauntless HQ. I jumped down from the roof as a Disturbed song started in my head and stood waiting for Four with a scowl on my face. He walked up to me and gave me a look I couldn't quite put my finger on. "Feeling better after that?" he queried, obviously talking about my little episode on the train.

"No, fuck off," I snapped, wanting to just get this over with.

He stared at me sharply before sternly telling me to come with him, and we walked off. We went higher into the glass building above the compound to where Eric was in a fairly standard office, I guessed this was where he worked when not beating initiates up. ' _Huh, this wasn't in the book,'_ I mused to myself, momentarily forgetting my mood, ' _cool, I get to learn new stuff about this place.'_

Four told me to wait outside and closed the door behind him as he entered. I sat against the wall next to the door and scowled at the floor, knowing that Eric would piss me off enough to snap again if he started yelling at me. ' _I hope I don't have to deal with the sadistic bastard today. I might very well do something I'll regret.'_

The door opened a few moments later and Four walked out, thankfully without Eric, and told me to get up. I did as I was told and followed him as he strode away down the hall. He opened a door a few doors down and flicked his head towards the room to tell me to go in. As I walked in I saw that inside was a simple metal table and 2 chairs opposite each other. It looked suspiciously like an interrogation room…

"Sit down." I followed the order, still frowning, crossed my arms and looked at him rigidly as he walked in. "Eric thinks this is necessary, and I am inclined to agree, so just be glad Eric isn't here doing this." He came to a stop, standing arms crossed at the opposite side of the table. "What were you doing in the hour you went missing out by The Fence?" I continued giving him a hard stare. "Were you sabotaging The Fence?"

"No. I would not endanger those within the city like that," I informed him flatly.

Four's hands slammed down on the table as he yelled at me, face inches from my own, "well then what exactly **were** you doing?! Don't lie to me!"

I didn't yell, I didn't get mad, I stayed calm (I was very surprised and proud of myself for that). I leaned forward to place my hands on the table, face inches from his own and carefully enunciated each word when I told him, "going to the bathroom and getting lost."

Four stood up and paced, running his hands through his hair in frustration, "we both know you are lying, so just tell me the truth."

"Wrong." He paused his pacing to look over to me in surprise at my defiance, "that is the truth, so take it or leave it, I don't care."

"You don't care?" he bewilderingly challenged as his arms fell to his sides, "you know you will be removed from Dauntless for treason if we have reason to believe your actions are traitorous?"

"I know," I crassly told him as I re-crossed my arms and leaned back into the chair, "and I don't care." He looked astounded at my statement, so I elaborate on my thoughts as he continued his pacing, "I can't tell you anything other than what I have already said, because it's the truth, therefore it is out of my control whether it's believed or not." I shrugged my shoulders, "so rather than get worried about it, I choose not to care. I can't force you to accept that it's the truth."

Now, that wasn't exactly entirely true - I did care. I cared because I needed to be here to finish the training I had been told to complete in this particular dimension. As much as I resented what I had been forced into, I knew the training would be useful, if not needed when it came to my safety in my new dimension hopping crazy life, and I couldn't afford to be kicked out and lose any of the skills I might have been able to gain from being here. But he needed to believe the lie if I was going to be able to stay.

He once again stopped pacing and stared at me for a few moments before saying in a somewhat state of shock, "okay…" He sighed deeply, obviously thinking hard, "okay. Fine. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. You are one of the best initiates here and it would be a real shame to lose you. **Don't** do anything like this again though, I won't extend this curtesy twice. I'm trusting you with this, and I'm sure you are aware that I have not trusted you at all."

"I am aware of this and don't blame you," I told him as I stood up and went to the door. I paused there and turned back slightly to solemnly inform him, "I'm grateful for the trust so I'm sorry when I have to say, I can't promise that," and with that walked out and back down the corridor to the compound, feeling his eyes on me the entire time.

* * *

Georgia: Hope you all enjoyed the chapter! I'm pretty sure most of you saw that mess coming... It seems every field trip I go on is doomed. *sarcastic jazz hands* YAY! Anyway, I have a question for you all, Altaïr has been sleeping on the sofa for the last week now as punishment and I was wondering if you guys thought he had been punished enough now? Should I allow him to sleep in a bed once again? Oh and before you ask how I managed to prevent him from doing so, well lets just say I have my ways... *grins evilly* (I gotta say, it was scary, be glad you didn't have to see it)

Altaïr: *from somewhere off screen* Please say "yes", the sofa is not comfortable.

Georgia: Let me know in the comments. Until next week! *waves*


	6. Sally can fight! Who knew

*Georgia and Altaïr are sitting on a sofa in front of camera*

Georgia: Sup guys? *jerks head up* How you lot doing? I hope you've been good and school/college/university/work has been treating you well and not stressing you out too much, cause that would suck. If it has I am sending virtual hugs your way!

Altaïr: Do not be ridiculous Georgia, you cannot send virtual hugs.

Georgia: Oh ye of little faith. I can and I will!

Altaïr: *stares at her*

Georgia: Oh whatever. Skeptical bastard. Just be glad you aren't still sleeping on this lovely sofa, which my readers so kindly decided you didn't have to do any more. You should thank Angel1D98 for that by the way, although I was going to stop punishing you after a few days anyway cause I don't like it when you sleep on the sofa. It means I can't use it. *pouts*

Altaïr: *sarcastically* Why thank you.

Georgia: Shhh you. Enjoy the chapter! It's a bit short I know, but that is seriously all that happened that day, it was boring.

* * *

 **Sally can fight?! Who knew...**

* * *

I woke up early again the next morning, desperate for food. After the disaster that was the field trip to The Fence I had hidden myself away, practicing my earthbending and avoiding everyone until they were long asleep - which meant I hadn't gone to dinner, so I hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours. I was up and gone before the rest of the transfers, traipsing through the dark halls to the cafeteria, stomach rumbling loudly the whole way to wait for breakfast to be ready. As I did, I recalled yesterday and mentally winced at how my emotions had sky rocketed thanks to hormones, usually it wasn't that bad. I guessed that the stress of my situation amplified my usual emotional intensity.

Breakfast was the usual variation of cereal, eggs (in every way possible), bacon, sausages, bread, an assortment of fresh fruit and yoghurt. I grabbed a small portion of everything and a glass of fresh OJ to wash it down. I found a seat as far away from the entrance as was physically possible, I wanted to avoid people as much as I could that morning.

I was about a third of the way through my breakfast when the others started trailing in. Four gave me an accusing look when his eyes landed on me from the other side of the room. I cringed and sank down in my seat, trying to avoid any attention, when two trays were slammed down in front of me, making me jump up in fright.

"Where were you yesterday?" Ben chided, "we were looking for you for hours after the trip! You weren't even at dinner. You owe us an explanation! Now."

I gently put my cutlery down as they sat down opposite me, thinking carefully about the best way to handle this. "I had to do something, and no I can't tell you what and no you can't tell anyone that. As far as anyone knows I went to relieve myself and got ridiculously lost, okay?"

They looked at me with a mixture of confusion and anger. "What do you mean you can't tell us?" Ben demanded, slamming a fist on the table in exasperation and causing people around us to stare our way.

I sighed tiredly and tried to calm him down, "I'm sorry I can't tell you the truth, but nobody can know the truth, not even Four knows. Which, by the way, is where I went after we got back. He dragged me away to see Eric about punishment, but he just told Four to deal with it. So he interrogated me about where I went and what I did."

"Oh," Sally gasped, a look of concern took over her face, "are you okay? He's scary when angry and he was **really** mad yesterday."

I gave an amused half smile at her worry, "yeah, I'm fine Sally. No big deal. I told him **the truth** ," I explained with air quotation marks around the truth, "that I went to pee and got lost. He believed me and dropped it, but I didn't feel like seeing anyone else yesterday, I was a little on edge, so I just stayed out of everyone's way."

They gave small nods of understanding while exchanging a look before turning back to me so Ben could say, "we don't forgive you, but . . . we understand. Just try and give us a heads up next time you are gunna do something stupid, okay?"

I gave them a small smile of understanding and said, "okay, I'll keep you in the loop."

They accepted this and conversation slowly morphed back into our usual topics. After I had finished I excused myself to go to the fighting room. We had made up, but it was still kind of awkward between us…

When I arrived I positioned myself in front of one of the punching bags on the far side of the room, wrapping my bandages around my hands as I went. I turned on one of my workout mix songs, and started relentlessly pounding at the bag.

A couple of songs later Four walked in and looked slightly surprised to see me there - probably because I was usually one of the last few to arrive to training, or on time at least, I was never early that's for sure. He walked over to me and stood there watching me, he didn't say anything. It was slightly unnerving after yesterday if I was honest. A few minutes later he spoke up, "where were you yesterday?"

I paused for a split second to give him a look of 'are you being serious right now' before I said to him, "we had this conversation yesterday, remember? I got pissed off, you got pissed off, you didn't kick me out of Dauntless…"

If Four was the kind of guy to roll his eyes I was pretty sure that's what he would have done then as he says agitatedly, "no. Not about that. Yesterday evening. Where were you for training? I waited for you for almost an hour."

I stopped punching, bewildered at what he said, and turned to look at him wide eyed. "Wait, you waited for me? Why? I thought you wouldn't show, given what happened earlier yesterday."

"Of course I would still be there, I told you there would be someone there every day and I keep my word."

"Oh," I muttered, looking down at the ground and scuffling my feet in embarrassment. "Sorry I kept you waiting. I . . . I didn't want to see anyone after…" I said, trailing off at the end, not really feeling like bringing up the disaster of a field trip that occurred the day before.

He sighed deeply, "just let me know if you aren't going to turn up again." He crossed his arms and said in a slightly friendlier tone, "so, that's why you weren't around yesterday…" Well, slightly friendlier tone meaning a less menacing tone at least.

"Yeah," I sighed as I thrust my hands into my pockets, "I figured you would still be pissed at me so I stayed out of your way." I shrugged my shoulders, "and stayed away from everyone else in case I blew up at them."

He raised his eyebrows, "blew up at them?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but I was just a **little** bit touchy yesterday," I sarcastically retorted, rolling my eyes. "I was easily angered and didn't want to snap at someone just because they said the wrong thing." ' _Stupid hormones,'_ I mentally complained, ' _speaking of, must remember to go to the bathroom before the fighting starts. Man, I hate being female sometimes.'_

"Oh. Right. Yes. You did seem a little . . . irritated on the train back," he said tepidly. "Why was that?"

"If you don't mind, I would rather not tell you." He raised his eyebrow at this, looking suspicious, so I added with my hands gesturing towards him, "you being a male and all…"

His eyes widened slightly and raised his eyebrows to say, "oh." He muttered a speedy apology and quickly scurried off to set up the chalkboard.

I snickered at his retreating form. Being a girl does suck at times, but guys' reactions to **that** time of the month are nearly always amusing to watch. There were always the exceptions to the rule, but as a sex they tended to not want to touch the subject with a 10-foot pole. Speaking of, I should go and deal with said problem.

Before I left the fighting room I walked over to Four as he chalked up the names for the day. "Hey, Four?"

He stopped writing and turned round, "yes?"

I nervously tucked my hands into my pockets once again and avoided his gaze as I said, "thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt yesterday, you didn't have to believe me – I know you don't trust me. So I just wanted to thank you for not kicking me out."

He looked at me thoughtfully, "no, I don't trust you yet. But I do believe you, you have told me many times now that you aren't here to sabotage Dauntless and none of your actions suggest otherwise." He raised his eyebrows and gave me a berating look to say, "but maybe next time don't do anything foolish like running off for an hour."

I smiled sheepishly, glad there were no hard feelings between us, and said, "I'll do my best. But I do have to run off right now, but only for a few minutes this time, promise," I declared as I backtracked to the door.

"It better be," he called out as he turned back to the blackboard, so I dashed off as fast as I could.

When I returned the rest of the class had arrived and were checking out who they were fighting. As I stood chatting with Ben and Sally they told me that now they had thought about it they had decided to forgive me, I was glad that our friendship was now back to normal, it was hard enough being here with friends, losing them would have been too much.

I briefly scanned the board as we stood there and saw that was my day off, I just got to watch, ' _how exciting_.' Although, as irritated as I was about it, it was probably for the best as I still hadn't quite recovered from fighting Four.

So instead I attentively studied the fights, trying to look for fighting styles or telegraphs (equivalent of a tell in poker) that would give me a fighting advantage. I had a feeling I got lucky with Kyle because it was the first fight, and that I would need to be a lot better next time if I wanted to win again.

Ben and Sally were up against the girls from Candor, Ben won without too much problem and I anxiously awaited Sally's turn. It was her first fight and she used to be Amity, she was a sweet, kind kid and not inclined towards violence at all, so I was concerned about her – bravery and fighting were not the same thing.

I went over to stand next to the ginger. "You ready for this?" I asked her under my breath.

She breathed in deeply, "yes. I think I am," was her determined response. I scrutinized her carefully - she seemed ready enough in my opinion.

"Okay. Good. Want any advice?"

"Erm, sure, I guess it couldn't hurt," she said to me slightly uncertain, not that I can blame her. After all I was not an instructor, so it wasn't really my place to give anyone any advice.

"You are small, but quick. So go in, deal your blow and get out quickly so she can't land a hit. She is a bigger and stronger, but slower. Use your knees and elbows to deal some damage. Go for the nose if you can, you will cause a reflexive backward flinch and cause her eyes to water - meaning she will be temporarily blinded and won't be able to defend herself properly." I paused for a moment, thinking about what else I knew about fighting. "Keep on your toes, movement around the ring is key, if you can dodge rather than block, do so. It's more effective against an opponent like this. And finally," I turned and placed my hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye, "show no mercy."

She gulped, "no mercy?"

"No. Don't hold back. Don't be nice. Don't let her win. Channel your inner me," I told her with a smirk.

She nodded, "okay. I can do this. Channel my inner violent friend," she asserted with a small smile. I saw her face harden and knew that she would give this Candor a run for her money. If this chick was expecting a timid little Amity who would play nice, she had another thing coming.

Sally was the last fight of the day and I watched with butterflies in my stomach as the fight began. My eyes widened in surprise as she took what I said to heart and charged straight at the girl. She landed three good strikes before dancing out of the girl's reach to the other side of the ring. I smirked in satisfaction at knowing my advice was helping.

"What on **earth** did you say to that girl?" Ben exclaimed in surprise.

I chuckled before saying, "I told her to channel her inner me and gave her some tips on moving around in the ring." I turned to see Ben staring at Sally, eyes wide at her performance. "Looks like she really listened to me," I told him with a smirk.

He turned his head to me and titled it to the side slightly to sarcastically say, "you don't say?" He looked back to the ring and muttered, "what happened to nice little Sally?" as the girl in question darted in and out of her opponent's reach, landing hit after hit but not receiving any.

"I would say nice little Sally has temporarily vacated the building," Ben snorted at this but didn't retort. We watched Sally in awe, she was a different girl in the ring. She used her small and agile body to fly around the ring like some sort of phantom. Her opponent couldn't seem to land a blow, Sally was too fast and light on her feet, using the size difference to her advantage as much as possible.

After a few minutes Sally took another piece of my advice and socked the ex-Candor in the nose, causing the girl to reel back, falling onto the floor whilst tears filled her eyes. Sally stopped, looking startled for a moment so I yelled to her, "no mercy! She has to yield!" before she lost her advantage.

The former Amity landed a few more blows to the girl writhing on the floor before she yielded. Sally barely had a scratch on her, while her opponent had a bloody nose and bruises all over. She walked back over to us and I grinned going for a high five at the same time as congratulating her. A few others came over and praised her fighting before they all drifted away, leaving the three of us.

"That was amazing!" Ben raved, grinning wildly at Sally who returned the gesture with equal enthusiasm. "She was not ready for the fighting machine that is Sally!" he wildly punched the air in emphasis.

Sally giggled at Ben's antics before turning and smiling at me, "I had a bit of help, thanks for the advice Georgia."

"Any time Sally," I grinned back.

"This causes for celebration!" Ben said before he paused for a moment. He looked like he was thinking hard when he suddenly punched a fist in the air and exclaimed, "we all won our first fights! Go us!"

"Huh, so we did," I mused. "So what kind of celebration did you have in mind?"

"How about Sally gets that tattoo we designed the other night?" he suggested.

Sally beamed at the suggestion, "that sounds like a great idea! Let's go." She grabbed our wrists and dragged us down the paths of The Pit, as we went I wondered if Tori worked there yet… Probably not yet, but you never know.

We walked into the tattoo parlour, all of us excited about Sally's tattoo, when I spotted a dark haired woman with a tattoo of a black-and-white hawk with a red eye on the back of her neck. Her back was turned to us so she didn't see my eyes widen in surprise. Tori. ' _Don't be stupid Georgia, you should have expected this,'_ I mentally scolded myself, ' _she was a middle aged lady when Tris knew her,'_ not young like I always pictured for some reason.

She turned around to greet us, "hello." She smiled welcomingly and asked, "are you all here for tattoos?"

"Nah, just Sally here," I answered while pushing her towards Tori. "She actually has a design of her own, if you are willing to use it?" I inquired.

Tori smile widened, "I always welcome new tattoos, I love seeing the designs people come up with! They are so interesting. So what's yours?"

Sally carefully described what she wanted inked on her arm, talking about how the flowers grow as they ascend. Tori was delighted and told us it was one of the more interesting designs she had been proposed (apparently she flat out refused to do some, but she wouldn't tell us why).

As Sally got settled in, Ben and I excused ourselves to go and grab some food, promising to pick up something for Sally. In our haste to get to the tattoo parlour we had forgotten about food - tragedy, I know! We picked up enough food for us all, portable stuff for Sally, and sat to chow down.

After we had finished eating I took the opportunity to seek out Four and inform him that I wouldn't be training tonight either. I didn't give him a chance to question why, I needed to get back to Sally and locating the trainer had taken up an annoying amount time. So I just gave him a rushed notification before racing back to Ben, leaving an open mouthed Four behind me in a slight state of confusion.

By the time we got back, after just under an hour, her tattoo was almost done. I had to admit it looked **really** cool! It spoke to me about how Sally had evolved from a timid little flower into a large magnificent one as she grew as a person here. . . of course I was probably looking into it too much but that's not the point.

"Are you sure you don't want to get one?" Sally asked me when it was done, "I wasn't sure at first, but now I have one I really think you should do it!"

"Sorry, but I don't want one, really truly. Actually, I'm going to go to bed if that's okay with you guys."

"Bed?" Ben exclaimed, "but it's barely night!"

"I know, I know, but I didn't sleep well last night and I'm still recovering. I'm fighting tomorrow so I need to make sure I've healed." They gave nods of understanding and bade me goodnight, so I headed back to the dorm to go to bed.

What they didn't know is that I knew exactly what was going to happen later that night. And I wanted to make sure I was rested enough for war.

* * *

Georgia: Okay, so I know that's clearly not all that happened that day, but I wanted to be evil and leave a cliffhanger! *queue shit eating grin* Sorry, cough not sorry.

Altaïr: I now see why your old friends called you Devil Child.

Georgia: Haha. Yeah I didn't get that name for no reason! I had a friend who's nickname was Moon Moon - I'm hoping you lot will understand that even if Mr Ancient over here *jerks thumb towards Altaïr* doesn't - and another who was called Muppet.

Altaïr: I don't understand the significance of either of those names.

Georgia: *pats his shoulder and fake mournfully says to him* And you never will... *turns back to us* Anyway, please favourite, follow and review! I miss my early reviewers *frowns* I hope that I haven't bored you and you are all still reading. Please let me know if you are still here... Anyway, adios until next week!


	7. Time for war

*Georgia and Altaïr stand in front of camera*

Georgia: *grinning* Hello again everyone. I hope you enjoyed last weeks chapter, I'm pretty sure you did as I got another two followers! Thank you to Elise477, Starlighte Silverdust for joining the gang! I look forward to seeing any reviews you may or may not post - cough, please review, cough.

Altaïr: What?

Georgia: Oh don't worry about it old man.

Altaïr: I am not old!

Georgia: Pssh. Whatever you say old timer. *perks up excitedly* OOOH! Guess who I met this week?!

Altaïr: The alternate version of yourself?

Georgia: Thankfully, no.

Altaïr: Alterante version me?

Georgia: Don't be stupid.

Altaïr: Templars?

Georgia: *facepalms* Okay, you aren't allowed to guess any more. No. I only met freaking James Bond! *squeals in delight* AND it was the **Daniel Craig** James Bond, who is the best in my opinion.

Altaïr: Who?

Georgia: Okay, you have to have realised by now that you aren't going to know most of the people we run into... You haven't? *shakes head in dismay* Well learn it now. Anyway, I stumbled into one of his action fight scenes - it was badass and he was obviously winning. They ran right past me, but like a good little time traveler I didn't interfere and just watched until it progressed into a spectacular car chase. Still it was a really cool surprise. Just thought you guys would be interested to hear about it, anyway enjoy the chapter guys, it's a doozy.

* * *

 **Time for war**

* * *

"Everybody get up! Now!" My eyes flew open and I was up like a flash, practically leaping from my mattress on the floor. Dauntless members poured into the room, torches being shone everywhere – wait, no not torches, flashlights. Got to think in American terms here – trying to get us all up and moving. "You have five minutes to get dressed and meet us by the tracks," the same voice says. I squinted at the figure, ' _oh of course it's Eric. Great, this'll be fun,'_ I sarcastically said to myself. "We're going on another field trip," he finished before striding out, the others following him. I didn't quite understand why all the others needed to come with Eric just to wake us up, Eric was loud and annoying enough by far in my opinion.

I stood at the end of my makeshift bed and waited for my friends to get dressed as I pulled my hair into its normal high pony tail, glad that I always slept fully clothed now I didn't know when a portal might turn up – it could be any day now I had dealt with the time threat. Once they were ready we ran through the dark halls all the way up to the surface, all the way they speculated what we were going to be doing and why it was so late at night. They asked me if I had any ideas about it, to which I feigned cluelessness. I mean, I knew but it wasn't going to be long until they knew so I let it be a surprise for them.

We arrived at the tracks first out of all the initiates, as Ben and Sally were quick dressers and we had moved pretty quickly up through the HQ. We saw the elder Dauntless milling around waiting for us in front of the tacks at our usual designated "train station" area, set off to one side of them were two large crates sitting next to each other with Eric and Four close by.

"We're shooting things?" Sally questioned, I was confused for a moment until I followed her gaze to inspect the crates closer. You could see the barrels of the guns poking out over the edge of one of the slightly larger box.

It's then that I spotted the word "PAINTBALLS" printed on the side of one of the crates. I grinned manically, doing a double fist pump, "yes! I fricking **love** paintballing!" I followed up my exclamation with a little happy dance on the spot. After all, I hadn't been a hundred percent sure if this was set in the movie or the book, and if it was the universe of the movie we would have been fighting with darts that synthetically produced the pain of a bullet. So yeah . . . I preferred paintballs.

"What are you on about?" Ben looked at me as if I was nuts, which in fairness is true - I am fairly nutty.

"We are going paintballing!" I proclaimed happily as I stopped dancing and thrust my arms out wide. Only to start dancing again as I sang, "I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it!"

"What the hell are you going on about, bitch?" came a voice I had come to hate from behind me.

I spun around to see Kyle with his little gang. I sneered, "I don't have to explain myself to you, assbutt," before turning back around and walking towards the guns with Sally and Ben in tow. As we were walking up to the crates Eric told everyone to grab a gun, we rushed over to the weapons to make sure we got first pick of the best equipment. I chose one of the guns that didn't look too battered, swung it onto my back and stuffed a box of ammo into each of my leg pockets.

"Assbutt?" Sally questioned as she echoed my movements.

"Oh don't worry about it, it's just a funny insult that was used where I'm from," I said dismissively as I watched her struggle for a moment to keep the gun in place. It wasn't long until everyone was happy with their tools and eagerly discussing their various theories on what the paintballing munitions were for and why both transfer and Dauntless born initiates were here.

We only hung around for a minute or two before the train rounded the corner, the light blinding me for a second as I was stupid enough to look right at is as it came closer. Spots danced across my vision and by the time they had cleared enough for my eyes to function again I saw that almost everyone was already on the train. "Shite," I cursed as I sprinted to catch up to the door.

As I grabbed a handle Sally and Ben pulled me in, "getting slow there Georgia," Ben smirked at me. I stuck my tongue out and found a place next to the door to lean against the wall so I didn't fall over as the train rocked. I noticed that I was the last one to arrive, which explained why as soon as I was settled Four spoke up.

"We'll be dividing into two teams to play capture the flag. Each team will consist of both Dauntless-born initiates and transfers. The teams will get off one at a time to hide their flag somewhere. We will be using paintball guns rather than real ones, if you receive a critical hit you are out effective immediately but receivers of non-lethal shots can continue playing until they have been stuck three times or take a lethal hit." His gaze swept across us all before he said sternly, "this is a Dauntless tradition, so take it seriously."

Eric stepped forward once he was done and announced, "Four and I are team captains." He looks over at Four, "transfers first?" Tobias shrugged in acknowledgement so Eric scanned the group to choose. "Kyle," was his obvious first choice, if I remember correctly Eric tended to go for strength while Four for speed. I briefly wondered which team I would be on as I'm not very fast, but Eric really does **not** like me so…

"Sally," Four's voice cuts through my train of thought. I beamed at Sally once it registered in my head who he had just picked, _'go Sally,'_ I thought as she returned my gesture with a smile of her own, _'first picked.'_ My smile wavered as I briefly wondered if I would be picked last, I hoped not.

"Aaron," Eric said as he lazily pointed towards Kyle's faithful sidekick, no surprise there either to be honest.

"Ben." Nice, Ben and Sally were on the same team!

"Liz," Eric chose one of the Erudite girls, I dimly recognised her from the first day – she was the one who told Kyle to shut up.

"Beth," Four called a Condor girl over. It was at this point I wished I had learnt the names of the other transfers earlier, I didn't know over half the people in our dorm and that might be problematic in this exercise.

"Steve," turned out to be the very large, black haired boy from Candor that I had tried very hard to steer clear of in fights so far.

I watched carefully as the lithe Candor boy, named Dan, and the last brunette girl from the same faction – Sarah - joined Four. Eric's line of teens received the last Erudite guy and Condor girl, Allen and Caroline.

' _Yay,_ ' I thought sarcastically, _'last to be picked,_ _ **what**_ _an honour.'_ It was clear that neither really wanted me, I was . . . a bit of a loose canon I guess.

Eric glared at me before saying, "I'm feeling particularly irritable today Four, so you can have the spare transfer annoyance on **your** team. Good luck," he said the last part with a smug little smirk. I pushed myself off the wall and took a deep breath, I would not be affected by this, I would not.

As I walked over to a frowning Four I could hear all the Dauntless born initiates murmuring quietly to each other. ' _Undoubtedly talking about me_ ,' I thought as I walked past a large bunch of them. My suspicion was confirmed when I heard two snippets of conversation, "I thought she was the first jumper, so why…" Quickly followed by another voice whispering, "what did she do to piss off **both** of them…"

The Dauntless born initiates were quickly divided up, but I didn't pay much attention as I was too busy trying not to be noticed, that is until I heard the name Zeke being called out. My head snapped up to see a slight, brown skinned boy with dark hair and matching eyes walk over to us. ' _Zeke… Where do I know that name from?'_ I pondered on it for a moment before realising, Zeke was Uriah's older brother . . . who's team won capture the flag! Which meant we would win, sweet!

Once the teams were chosen Kyle decided to pipe up, "hold on a second, they have an extra person!"

Eric looked over at me with a smirk, I swear, is that thing always etched on his face? "I wouldn't worry about Georgia, Kyle. She is more of a hindrance than help." This caused smug looks to form on the faces of all of his team, while looks of concern were passed between my team members. I shrunk back against the carriage wall in embarrassment, I hated this, I didn't want to be seen as useless. It pissed me off.

Four looked irritated too, although slightly less than how I felt, as conversations of concern were passed between his group until he decided to stop it by calling out, "that's enough! Do not doubt the competence of your team members. You are a team, act like it." Eric looked at his rival smugly, seemingly believing that he had caused Four's team to lose by handing me over to him. "We will head out first."

"Off you go then," Eric said with a shooing motion towards us all.

Our leader pushed himself up from the wall he was leaning against and jumped out the train, followed by the rest of his team. I quickly go to the door but was shoved out of the way by a sneering Dauntless born guy. I looked away and let everyone else leave before me, I didn't want to cause any more trouble than I had already managed in the past few days. As I was about to follow I heard, "off you go little trouble-maker," jeered at me by Eric, followed by his brutes mocking me as I jumped out.

' _Assholes,'_ I growled mentally as I dropped into a roll upon my feet hit the ground. I sprung up to see "my team" gathering a bit further back with Four standing a few feet away from the rest. I walked over to them, careful where I stepped in the dark as I had no idea what kind of debris was lying around, until I heard them arguing about where to put the flag. I came to a stop on the outside of the circle, they couldn't think of a good place and nobody had mentioned where I knew the flag should end up.

Once there is a lull in their arguing I spoke up, "what about Navy Pier? Only one way in and out, easier to defend. You could put it on the carousel." They all turned to stare at me. I felt heat rise to my cheeks but I held my head high, I knew my suggestions and reasoning were good – not to mention it was where the flag was supposed to go.

"Who asked you?" scoffed the Dauntless born guy from earlier, "you are to stay quiet and out of the way in this, understand?"

At that point someone spoke up for me, "but she has a point, Adrien. Navy Pier is a good place to put the flag, especially the carousel. If I remember correctly it's surrounded by open space, we would be able to see them coming easily."

Adrien turned to whoever spoke to ask, "really? Are you sure, Zeke?" Oh, so it was Zeke that defended my idea. Good to know I wasn't hated enough by everyone to immediately dismiss my idea.

"I'm sure. They can't flank us on the pier. Besides it's not like we have a better idea right now. Let's head over there and if anyone can come up with something better on the way, we can change it."

Everyone murmured in agreement, so us eleven initiates walked - with our passive as ever team leader bringing up the rear- quietly towards the lakeside. Well . . . marsh-side is what I should call it I suppose. I flipped on my mental music as everyone else had hushed conversation between themselves. I think Sally and Ben tried to talk to me but I don't remember because I was too immersed by the sights of Chicago. Well, what was left of it anyway. I recognised landmarks here and there, it was easier to spot the ones that were still in tact than those that were falling apart. Many of them brought back fond memories and I found myself getting lost in them, almost tripping up a number of times as a result.

We walked down what used to be East Grand Avenue; past the remnants of the Whole Foods we used to shop at and where my brother and I used to get Starbucks from, past my old home and alongside the old dog park where I remembered walking our dog, all the way until reached Navy Pier. We followed Zeke up the steps to the carousel with the Ferris wheel looming over it. I smiled as I gazed up, remembering when a couple of friends and I went up it to look over the city. It was a spectacular view back in the day.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

I jumped out of my skin at hearing this said from right next to me, and spun around to see Zeke staring up at the ride in awe. "Don't scare a person like that!" I scolded him with a frown.

He turned his head to look at me with a raised eyebrow, "well then you should pay more attention." I just grumbled in response as I looked back up at the impressive structure, his raised eyebrow dropped as his gaze followed mine, "people used to ride this for fun apparently. They must have been Dauntless to have gone up on that."

"No, this wasn't used for fun really, it was mostly used for the views of the city," I said absentmindedly to him before noticing that everyone else was gathering in front of the carousel. "C'mon, looks like stuff's happening."

We walked over as Four began to explain to us, "the other team will have placed their flag in roughly 10 minutes. I suggest you use that time to prepare - make a strategy, mental preparedness is an important part of your training as a Dauntless initiate." Seemingly from nowhere he pulled out a flag that glowed a soft orange in the night.

As he finished Ben strode forward to take the flag from him with assured motions, then turned to the group to tell them, "we should split into two groups, one defends the flag while the other looks for the other team's."

Adrien looked mad by that point and angrily stated, "and who put you in charge, **transfer**. I think we should go full on attack at them, hit them hard and fast before they can get us." Upon hearing that everyone started talking at once, each pitching their own idea as the best plan of action.

I sighed dejectedly. "Idiots, they can't all be the leader here," I muttered to myself as I walked over the the edge of the pier. Knowing I wasn't wanted in helping plan our strategy, I decided to take in the view instead. I lent up against the railing listening to 'Carry me Home' by SOHN, one leg hooked behind the other while my arms were loosely crossed on the top of the fence as I sung quietly to myself.

I looked out over the marshland that was once a glistening water filled lake, the stars lighting up the cloudless black sky above me. I smiled faintly as I remembered the last time I was out here. It was a night just like this, the senior graduation party was a held on a boat late into the night, sailing on the lake for hours. I fondly remembered gazing over the water at the lit up city, it's gloriousness reflected in the rippling water, it was so calming and peaceful. The skyline was so different now – dark ruins stood where a once beautiful and vibrant city had been. It was a disheartening sight.

I felt eyes on my back as I stood there, but ignored them until I had finished the song as I didn't want to be disturbed. Once I finished I took a deep calming breath, pushed myself up and walked back to see that half our team had left already, presumably to get the flag, leaving Four with us to defend the flag - who currently had his eyes trained on me.

I smiled to myself when I noticed that both Ben and Sally were part of the strike team, ' _good for them, maybe one of them will steal the flag_.' I traipsed over to where Adrien was organising the other defenders, "where do you want me, and what do you want me doing?" I asked politely.

"Wherever and whatever, just stay out of our way," he curtly replied jabbing a finger against my chest before quickly walking away like I was some diseased being he didn't want to be associated with.

"Okay," I said before sighing and walking towards the carousel to the soundtrack of Linkin Park while I retied my hair in a high bun to stop it getting in the way. I surveyed the surrounding area, looking for a good defensive position around the flag that was softly glowing orange on one of the centre horses. I noticed that Four was leaning, arms crossed against one of the poles lining the edge of the carousel, watching us all carefully. I ignored his gaze as it followed me around the back of the carousel after I had made a decision of where to make a stand.

Out of sight from the rest I looked up at the top of the ride, it was higher up than I thought it would be, this would take some assistance. I scanned the area around me for anyone who might see me. Seeing nobody I jumped, thrusting my hands upwards to force the earth up at the same time with my earthbending to give me a boost, and grabbed hold of the edge of the roof. As I hoisted myself up I flipped my hand palm down while lowering them slowly to bend the earth back into the ground, ensuring I left no evidence behind, I smiled, nobody would know.

I carefully walked over to the edge of the carousel facing inland, unslung the gun from my back and loaded as many paintballs as I could into the ammo compartment. The gun looked a lot more sophisticated than the ones I had used before, the ammo set up in a much less bulky way and more like a mag of an actual gun, hopefully this meant it jammed less than the usual method.

After inspecting the gun, I slammed my foot into the roof and sent out a seismic sense wave to see if any of the enemy were close. I identified the locations of my team and memorised their positions so I didn't shoot them. There was nobody close as of yet so I just stood and waited, nodding my head along to 'Castle of Glass'.

Every few minutes I used my seismic sense to try and gain an early warning of their advance. Not long later it paid off. They were coming.

"Enemy incoming!" I yelled out to the others, "three left side of the pier, three right! Roughly forty-five seconds out!"

"How do you know?" was yelled at me from somewhere.

"I can see them advancing from up here," I replied. None of the others were as high as me so I hoped they just agreed with me and didn't question how I could see them.

"Get ready!" was passed around the other five of our defensive group.

As the music morphed to 'All For Nothing' I walked to the area I deemed the most defensible atop the ride and hit the deck before manoeuvring into prone position. I set my sights on the left side, as the right group would be funnelled through the staircase as they arrived, making it easier to pick them off.

"INCOMING," was hollered seconds before guns were fired from both sides. I caught an initiate that slipped through our defence on the left side and fired. I sent three shots at his chest and another two at his legs for good measure. Three pellets found their targets and he was down.

The others on the left side were dealing with the enemy well and I thought the right were the same until I heard, "right side defence down! Enemies heading for the flag!" ' _Shite!'_ I cursed in my head, ' _how many muppets got through?'_

I whirled to face the incoming threat and spotted two enemy targets at the top of the stairs making a beeline for the flag. I knew that I couldn't shoot them both in time so slammed a hand down on the roof, sending out a wave to locate the mechanism that made the ride turn. I quickly did so and kicked it into full gear. The metal beneath me groaned and whined in protest, but the platform was soon spinning, taking the flag away from Eric's team.

I snapped my gun back up and looked down my sights. I located one target and fired 5 rapid shots at his torso before swinging to the second guy and doing the same, only just managing to clip him with one shot before he was out of my firing range. I moved the gun away and crawled forward to see they were both covered in my neon blue paint and someone else's yellow. I grinned as I noticed that my victims were none other than Kyle and Aaron.

I moved back into a vigilant position, with the merry-go-round still turning beneath me, and stayed that way until I heard, "Four's team wins," yelled from the end of the pier. Seconds later I saw Sally and Ben running down the pier holding a glowing red flag between them, yelling as they ran. It was over, we had won.

I placed my hand back on the carousel and stopped the wheels turning slowly – so it looked natural and it wasn't me doing it – until it would slow down from just friction. I stood up, lobbed the gun on my back and leapt down from my perch with a finishing roll to avoid injury.

Before I had a chance to catch my breath, both of my friends barrelled into me laughing and shouting with joy. The two of them were trying to talk at the same time, so I told them to calm down and speak one at a time.

Of course they only half paid attention to me and chorused, "we got the flag!" at the same time, with matching grins on their faces.

I grinned back and managed to say, "well done guys! I knew you could do it," just before they grabbed a hand each, pulling me into joining them jumping up and down with joy. We stayed like that for a few minutes until we were out of breath and moved to chatting excitedly about how they managed to grab it as we waited for instructions. It took a while for everyone to gather back into a big group again, but once everyone was accounted for we headed back to the train line.

 **Four's POV**

I watched Georgia as she walked a distance ahead of the rest of us, talking animatedly with her friends. She had surprised me today and . . . I will begrudgingly admit that she impressed me as well. She had ignored the team's distain of her and just got on with what she knew needed doing, which she performed with skill. Her tactical positioning was excellent, her suggestion for positioning of the flag equally so, and her shots were on target almost every time. I had no idea how she managed to see the incoming initiates from so far out, but it was impressive and beneficial.

One thing still confused me though - how did she manage to get the carousel working? I was fairly certain it was her, as it started moving moments after she saw the two from Eric's team heading for the flag. But how? She hadn't moved to turn it on, not to mention the fact that it hadn't ever be known to move before. Which suggested that it wasn't her, but who else would it have been? She was the only one close to the ride. I pondered it for a few minutes before I eventually came to the conclusion that it was just a fluke of nature and it was coincidental that she was there.

I was still irked by her behaviour during the trip to The Fence, but my opinion of her was slowly improving as a result of her actions since then, even if she confused me to no end. One minute she acted like a child, and the next like someone far older and wiser than her actual age. Maybe it was just a result of her upbringing which she later admitted was very different from what was normal to me.

I was so deep in thought I hadn't realised how far ahead the three were, but once I realised I called out, "Georgia! Sally! Ben! Wait there!" I saw them wave in acknowledgment and nodded back to show I saw, not that they noticed as they were back to excitedly talking and laughing. I mentally rolled my eyes, for someone two years older than me this girl was far too immature at times.

Out of nowhere there was a loud groaning and screeching sound. I had heard this sound many times before and brought everyone to a halt as I scanned the surrounding buildings. That sound meant one thing, one of the buildings might be about to collapse. It had only happened a few times before, luckily nobody was around and there were no casualties, but I wasn't going to take any chances.

The initiates looked around in confusion for a few moments before shrugging and returning to their conversations. There was another sound of complaining metal and I hastened my search. It took a while but I eventually spotted the skyscraper supports that were under stress. Supports that snapped with a shriek the moment my gaze landed on them.

The building began to collapse. Collapse on top of the oblivious trio standing underneath it – and it wasn't toppling slowly.

"YOU THREE! MOVE!" I bellowed as loud as I could manage, hoping it was enough. They looked over at me in confusion. All the other initiates were yelling about the plummeting building when they **finally** looked up and noticed the falling concrete. I heard the three friends scream in fear before running back towards us. Ben sped ahead of the girls, his longer legs helping him get clear of the danger zone. They would have been better off going away from us, less distance to cover, but I wasn't about to make them turn around now. It looked like they would make it in time, they were three quarters of the way there, but then the unimaginable happened. Sally fell.

I watched in horror as she hit the ground. Ben had just reached the group and had screamed in fear upon realised what had happened. He was about to run back when I grabbed his arm. "Don't be stupid Ben, you will only get yourself killed too!"

We all watched in apprehension to see if she got back up when Georgia made the stupidly selfless, brave decision I just knew she would make. She skidded to a halt and sprinted back to her fallen friend. There was nothing I could do as she picked up her comrade and helped her limp towards us. We made eye contact. Her eyes were filled with determination, I could see that even from where I was, she wasn't going to leave Sally behind.

Adrenaline was coursing through my body, I wanted to run and help but I couldn't do that because I was in charge of the initiates here, and the building was almost on top of the pair. There was absolutely nothing I could do for the girls without getting myself at least injured in the process. I watched in horror as Sally stumbled once again. Georgia needed to leave her if she was going to make it out of this alive, that was the logical thing to do, but despite it being the logical move I knew she wouldn't do something like that.

Instead she looked up and froze at seeing the tons of concrete cascading down onto her. _'No,'_ I mentally screamed, ' _don't stop! Keep running! Don't freeze!'_ But it was too late, she wouldn't make it now even if she left Sally. I could tell she knew that, because the last thing I saw before the skyscraper crashed to the earth was Georgia turning around and throwing her body over Sally's helpless form in a futile effort to shield her from the impact.

* * *

Altaïr: *whistles in awe* That is intense.

Georgia: Ha, yeah you are telling- *alarms blaring*

*Georgia's eyes widen and they rapidly spin around in place to face the back of the room*

Altaïr: They found us. We need to leave.

*They run off screen in separate directions*

Georgia: Make sure you grab everything! See **this** is why we never unpack properly! Make sure you pack these.

*Objects are seen flying across the screen*

Altaïr: Then why is it **your** things are everywhere.

*More things are thrown the other way across the screen. Altaïr is seen following them with bags in his hands*

Georgia: Put them in the storage. I'll get the camera. *Georgia appears on screen to rapidly say* Genericusername I'm sending the file as soon as I turn this off. They found us faster than we expected, I think they are tracking us somehow. We need to loose them and find out how before we can communicate again. I don't know how long that will take, but I will let you know when it's safe to talk ASAP.

Altaïr: GEORGIA WE NEED TO LEAVE, NOW!

Georgia: *shouts to the right of the screen* COMING. Bye guys.

*screen goes black*

AN: Um. So...that happened. I'm sure they will be okay guys, don't worry, I'm not worrying, no not at all. They will be back soon. They will be fine.

I will post as soon as I hear from them again. Promise.


	8. Well, shit

*Georgia is sitting on sofa looking very tired with bruises dotted all over all visible areas of skin, Altaïr is next to her equally tired with a broken arm, looking frustrated*

Georgia: *tiredly* Hello again, it's been a while I know and I'm sorry it was so long since I got in touch. It been a manic month or running and hiding from these guys that are after us, every time we thought we were safe they somehow caught up with us. *sigh* Every bloody time we thought we were in the clear... *runs hands down face* It was exhausting.

Altaïr: *grunts* And as you can see we are still recovering from a number of injuries *gestures with his casted arm*

Georgia: *snorts* Yeah, not that you are being a petulant child about it or anything... *gives him a sidelong glance* But anyway, back to important business, I've written you guys a new chapter! Finally... And Raynereese I'm sorry to hear you can't log in, that sucks but I'm glad you are enjoying my story and I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon! Although I can't guarantee the speed I'll be writing...

Altaïr: I'm sure they won't mind the speed as long as you continue giving them chapters. Speaking of, we should go and leave them to read, so goodbye and enjoy. *stands and walks off*

Georgia: Bit rude, but then he always has been... He is right though, so see ya!

* * *

 **Well, shit...**

* * *

I slowly cracked my eyes open once I felt the rubble around us had stopped shifting, not that it helped, I couldn't see a thing, it was pitch black down here. I slowly lifted my head up from where it was pressed against Sally's and took a breath to speak to her, but ended up having a coughing fit from all the dust in the air. A second later Sally started couching too. I knew the lack of and poor quality of air would kill us, so I concentrated and carefully earthbent the dirt out of the air so we could breathe clearly.

This took a lot more effort than I anticipated, as I was trying to do an intricate task while holding a few tons of building up at the same time, by the time I was done I could feel sweat dripping down my back. I had managed to create a little bubble of protection around us seconds before the structure crashed to the ground, a space just a little larger than we were with just enough room to sit up in. Unfortunately, despite its small size, it was causing a massive strain on me both physically and mentally, as I had never attempted to bend so much earth before. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold this for long.

"Sally, are you okay?" I asked anxiously, giving up on faking an American accent at this point, it wasn't important any more. I could feel her body breathing beneath me but that didn't mean much at that point, only that she was alive.

"I think so," came a timid voice from below me. "But, how are we still alive? What happened?"

I paused for a second, trying and failing to come up with a way to explain what had happened. I had to keep my abilities secret, the darkness would help with that thankfully, but how was I to explain the strange phenomena that was occurring? "Erm, I'm not a 100 percent sure to be honest. But what I do know is that we need to get out of here."

"Okay," she replied softly. It was far too quiet after the crashing of the building hitting the ground, it was unnerving. "Georgia, why are you so out of breath?" she asked.

"Just cause," I replied quickly between gasps as I uncurled my body that was protectively around my friend, pushed myself off of her and onto my hands and knees. I clambered away from her and turned around to face where the others had stood before the world went dark. Carefully feeling where I was going, I crawled over to the edge of my safe pocket and pounded a fist against the side, sending out a seismic wave to see where the debris was weakest. Thankfully we were only a few hundred feet from the edge of the remains and I could feel a vertical passage that ran straight to the top of the building's skeleton, it wasn't too far from where we were, maybe 200 hundred feet or so. I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt like an elevator shaft, so it would be stable enough to get us out of there.

"We gotta move," I panted, "stay close." I felt her come up behind me and touch my ankle to see where I was, ' _good,_ ' I said to myself, ' _she's staying calm and doing what I ask.'_ I thrust out an arm and heaved the rubble out of our way, clearing a narrow tunnel for us to crawl through for a few meters. I conserved my energy and didn't say anything to Sally, I just started crawling forwards and hoped she followed.

She did so without a word and we were soon both inside my little crawlway, so to try and prevent me exhausting myself too quickly I collapsed my pocket of safety behind us. Sally yelped in alarm, "what was that?" she cried out fearfully, as I exhaled in relief at the loss of strain on my system.

I took a second to catch my breath. "Don't worry about it, it was just the rubble shifting," I placated to try and keep her calm. "We've got to keep moving, come on," I told her before creeping forward again.

Sally whimpered quietly before saying, "okay," and followed me closely.

A moment later we reached the end of my tunnel so I paused and thrust my hand out again, forcing the bits of concrete and steel out of our way for another few meters. I collapsed to the ground at the effort and gulped down some air for a couple seconds. The effort needed to keep doing this was intense, but I had to keep going, I had to get Sally out of here, so I pushed myself upright again and continued on without a word.

I progressed through the dirt, hoping that there was no broken glass or nails for me to cut myself on - I didn't know if tetanus shots were available here or not and I really didn't want to find out that way. I tried to move as quietly as possible as we made our way through the building, straining my ears to hear any noises beyond my own laboured breathing. _'They will be looking for us, calling our names,'_ I positively thought to myself, ' _they won't have given up yet_.' The silence coupled with the darkness was unsettling, but it was necessary if I wanted to hear the others trying to rescue us.

I reached the end of the section I had cleared and blindly reached my hand out until it came into contact with the wall. I found it and came to a halt, causing Sally to crash into me from behind. "Why did we stop?" she questioned, a slightly panicked tone to her voice.

I craned my neck over my shoulder as far as I could and said, "I've got to move some stuff, don't worry about it," to reassure her. I faced front again and drove my hand forward, bulldozing another few meters of path for us before I collapsed to the floor wheezing. This was causing too much strain on me. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep this up. I couldn't collapse the tunnel behind us for fear of causing a complete collapse of our passage, so I had to hold the whole tunnel until we were out. This meant the further and further we went, the move building I had to stop from crashing down on us.

"Are you okay?" Sally asked me, concerned that I had collapsed for seemingly no reason.

I drew in a few gulps of air so I could speak, "yeah, don't worry about me, we are almost there," I rasped back. I picked myself up again and carried on propelling myself through the rubble. We hit the end of that section of tunnel not long afterwards and I once again cleared more tunnel for us to move through. I crashed to my stomach, lungs heaving, I couldn't do that again, it just wasn't happening. My body simply could not take the strain of holding up so much of the building.

"Look!" Sally exclaimed, "I can see light up ahead!"

I slowly raised my head, praying it was true. Oh, sweet relief! Light! Not much of it, but there were clearly thin beams of light filtering down to us – enough to light up our escape route. I lowered my forehead to the ground, thanking my lucky stars that I had enough strength to get us to the hole.

"C'mon, we're almost out of here," I chocked out, I was really struggling for breath by this point, dark spots had begun to swim across my vision. We needed to hurry. I pulled myself up and dragged my body towards the light as fast as I could manage.

I was focusing so much on moving my body while keeping the tunnel from caving in, that I didn't notice we had reached the end of the tunnel until my head clanged against a metal wall. The lift shaft! I reached both hands up and pressed them against the cool steel. I concentrated hard and used my bending as I pushed against the metal to make a hole in the steel. I fell through the wall and landed hard on the bottom of our exit route, panting hard. The only thing I could focus on at that point was keeping that tunnel aloft until Sally was free.

She crawled through the ragged circle in the metal and dragged me to sit against the wall, asking me over and over if I was okay. I didn't respond as I felt her hands checking my body for injuries. My eyes were trained on the gap in the wall and all my attention was on making sure our previous escape route collapsed safely and didn't compromise the structural integrity of the space we were currently in.

Once it was safe I let out a huge sigh of relief as a both literal and figurative weight was lifted off my shoulders. As I sat wheezing and coughing while leaning against the wall, barely able to move, we faintly heard our names being yelled from the surface and tuned to look at each other with manic grins on our faces. They had found us.

We frantically started yelling, "we are down here! Here! Down here! We're alive!" Trying desperately to be heard. But nobody came. They hadn't heard. I was close to despair at this point, the walls of the lift shaft were too smooth and too high to even think about trying to climb out, and I couldn't manage to move without dark spots clouding my vision.

So in a last ditch effort I raised my hand and slammed my palm against the cold metal, using my bending to amplify the wave of sound that resulted from my action at least tenfold. The clang bounced off the walls, echoing as it made its way up the metal duct until it reached the surface. Once I heard it had reached the top I took a deep breath and bellowed, "we are down here," as loud as I could while amplifying the sound with the last of my strength. I felt myself fall to the side as blankness took my sight from me, Sally rushed from where she was standing and yelling to check on me. But there was nothing she could do as exhaustion took over and I blacked out to the sound of Sally's concerned voice and the fading echoes of my cry for help.

I slowly came back to consciousness. I felt myself in a set of loose pyjama type clothes on a soft mattress with crisp sheets covering my body. ' _So, they got us out from the rubble then,'_ I dimly realised, ' _I hope Sally is okay.'_ My eyes flew open, ' _SALLY!'_ I sat bolt upright and scanned the beds next to me, briefly noticing that I was once again in the infirmary as I did so, _'is she okay?! Is she hurt?! Why can't I see her?'_ I flung the sheets off, swung my body round and dropped out of bed, _'where_ _ **is**_ _she?!'_

As my feet were placed on the ground a message appeared in my vision from the microchip inside my head. It wanted to inform me of my current physical condition and why I fell unconscious. "I haven't got time for that," I muttered as I forced it to go away as fast as I could, so I could quickly pace down the row of beds, searching for my friend in each one. I found a handful of the beds occupied - apparently there had been a lot of injuries recently - but none by the ex-Amity.

"What exactly are you doing out of bed?"

I jumped what felt like 5 feet in the air and felt my heart skip a beat as I reeled around to see the person behind the berating.

"You know you were unconscious for the last two and a half hours," Four said standing on the other side of the room, arms crossed and a look of disapproval clear on his face.

I strode back towards him, worry etched of my face, "no I didn't, but that's really not important right now." I came face to face with him and rapidly pleaded, "where is Sally? Did you rescue her too? Why isn't she here? Is she okay? Was she hurt?" I gasped and covered my mouth with my hands as I had a dreadful thought, "please don't tell me she is dead! Please tell me I got her out of there!"

He uncrossed his arms, his stern look replaced with one of concern, and placed his hands on my shoulders to gently tell me, "Georgia, calm down. Sally is fine, she hasn't got any injuries - you protected her - so she is asleep in the dorm. You do realise it's currently 4am?" He raised his eyebrows in questioning as he released his hands to gently steer me back to bed.

"Oh. Okay. Good. And no, I didn't," I replied in a daze of relief as I allowed him to manoeuvre me into bed.

"Well it is, and you need to rest," he said defiantly before turning around to walk off.

I shook myself back into awareness and called out, "wait!" as I grabbed his arm to stop him. "What happened?"

He turned around to look at me with raised eyebrows, "you don't remember?" I rolled my eyes to the heavens at his ridiculous question – of course I don't remember! I was out for the count the entire rescue!

"Er, no I don't, or I wouldn't be asking," I said crossing my arms.

He narrowed his eyes at me in slight annoyance, "well it seems you are back to normal if you can sass me perfectly fine." He sighed and slouched his shoulders in compliance, "what was the last thing you remember?"

My face scrunched up in annoyance as I told him in a frustrated tone, "blacking out, and I'm still not sure **why** I did." Of course I knew perfectly well, but you gotta fake it till you make it in this line of business.

He ran his hand down his face, exhaling deeply as he took a seat in the ugly looking chair to the right of my bed. "The nurse said you passed out from exhaustion and strain on your body – presumably as a result of a building falling on you. Sally wouldn't say much about what happened after we lost sight of you, and we didn't press because she was unsurprisingly still in shock, so I can't tell you about that. But I can tell you that we found you after about 20 minutes of searching - luckily we heard your voices echoing out of the elevator shaft. We almost missed you two, as we had just searched that area and didn't notice the opening."

I nervously shifted in my bed, hoping that he wouldn't ask to many questions about how we managed to get to the safe exit from our original spot, as the cavern that saved us was made by gifts that he would not understand and the lift was a distance from our original position.

I was grateful when he didn't notice my uncomfortableness and continued on, "when we found you two Sally was franticly trying to get our attention while you were unconscious at her feet. I calmed her down from the surface while we waited for Ben to come back with the others and some equipment to rescue you both. Eric arrived with some rope to pull you out not long after I had calmed Sally down. It took a few minutes to tie the rope to you to bring you up safely, but we managed to pull you both out safely, then we brought you back here to check on your injuries."

I thought he was going to continue his story, but when he didn't I had to prod him to get the answer I was looking for, "sooo, why were you here hours after we were brought back?"

He nervously avoided my eyes and murmured, "I wanted to make sure you were okay . . . felt guilty I didn't notice the building sooner…"

Although I was undoubtedly grateful at his concern that brought a small smile to my face, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at hearing this. Why was it that people felt guilty over things they had absolutely no control over? It's not like he could have stopped a crippled, broken-down building from deciding it was going to raze itself to the ground.

"Four," I said flatly to get him to look at me, "don't be an idiot." A look of confusion passed his face and I realised I was going to have to spell this out for him, so I softly told him, "you can't blame yourself for this. There was nothing you could do and you know it. There is **nothing** for you to feel guilty for, okay? So get stupid thoughts like that out of your head."

He shot a brief half smile my way, "I know that. But I was responsible for you, and you got hurt on my watch."

I sighed, "Four, there is a certain phrase I love to use at times like this – shit happens, deal with it. Just forget about it, okay? Everybody is fine, so it's no big deal, don't beat yourself up over it."

He exhaled deeply before standing up and resting a hand on one of my sheet covered legs, "get some rest. It's back to training once the doctors let you go."

"Sure thing, you muppet," I said giving him a small shake of the head at his change of topic, men… He shook his head at my expression before heading off, I snuggled down into my bed, closing my eyes to the sounds of his fading footsteps.

An hour and a half of tossing and turning later, I **still** couldn't sleep. I was beginning to get frustrated, I really hated not being able to sleep when I wanted to – especially when I knew that I needed to get some sleep and my body just wasn't doing what I wanted. I had done everything I could think of; I had tried god knows how many sleeping positions – no success, I dealt with all lower body issues – no change, so tried drinking some water – nothing, attempted to count sheep – nada, took a relaxing shower – zilch in the sleep department, listened to my sleeping playlist – nope, took a short walk – no help, tried laying meditation – zip, forced myself to stay awake before trying again – zero help, and as a last ditch attempt tried the "4-7-8 Method" – nothing. I was officially out of ideas.

I rolled over to look at the clock on my bedside table and groaned, in frustration " _five-forty-five?!'_ I moved onto my back to stare at the ceiling, _'How am I still awake? I just had a building land on me for Christ's sake! I should be exhausted!'_ I slowly ran my hands down my face as I came to the conclusion to just give up. I was obviously not going back to sleep so decided to get up instead.

I flung my covers off me with a huff of annoyance. At this point I didn't care if the doctors hadn't given me permission to leave, as far as I could tell from an inspection of my body I was uninjured so they had no reason to keep me cooped up. I hopped out of bed and threw open my storage portal to pull out some clothes to put on.

I ended up wearing a sweet pair of camo trousers with a black tank top and combat boots – man I freaking love camo – as I strode out the infirmary as fast as I could without disturbing anyone. I paused as I exited the door to think, what exactly did I want to do? I pondered over the last few days and came to the conclusion that I needed to catch up on my workout routine, so quickly went back into the infirmary to change into my running gear.

I walked back into the pit, sad that I had to loose my camo, chose some workout songs and set off. The place was deserted, making it easy to do the task that was impossible at regular hours of the day with so many people around. I let all thoughts empty from my head as my feet relentlessly pounded on the ground. I went up and down The Pit over and over again. I was entirely focused on two things, the music pulsing in my head and my feet striking the ground.

* * *

Georgia: So there is your chapter! *looks around* Yeah, no Altaïr this time cause he's gone off to sulk about his broken arm somewhere, he really hates being handicapped form injuries, he'll be back to normal soon. If he doesn't I'll just have to knock some sense into him... *smirks* Anyway, see you guys soon with my next chapter! *grins and waves*


	9. Sharp, pointy things

**[PROPER AN: Yeah, so I am fully aware that I kinda suck for not updating earlier - blame the new trilogy and video game I got - and you have my sincere apologies for that but to make it up to you I'm posting two chapters this week!]**

* * *

*Georgia sits alone on a chair against a blank wall*

Georgia: How are you all doing? Good I hope, at least in a better mood than **somebody** *glares to the left* I could mention! *faces forward again* So first things first, I should apologise for buggering off longer than I should have, unfortunately we decided it was best to go dark for a while and lead our lovely stalkers on a merry goose chase that seems to have paid off for now. So I won't be vanishing for a long time any time soon - at least I hope not.

Altaïr: Will you get on with it so we can get back to our game.

Georgia: *rolls eyes* Oh quit grumbling ya moody sod, or I'll start up with the old man jokes again. *gives us a withering look* He has been unbearable recently and I have resorted to playing chess with him, despite being monumentally bad at it compared to him it keeps him entertained so we keep playing.

Altaïr: Hurry. Up.

Georgia: *sighs deeply* Alright alright alright. I'm coming. Enjoy the chapter guys! Don't think I'll be allowed to shoot you a send off part so have a good rest of the week and I'll give you the next part soon.

*Stands and walks to camera*

Georgia: *low enough only we can hear* Time to babysit once again, wish me luck - I need it...

* * *

 **Sharp, pointy things**

* * *

Gradually I started to pass more and more people on my run as the Dauntless HQ came to life. I figured it must be around seven if people were up and about, so I headed back to the sick bay to clean up and see if I could get discharged. As I made my way back down to the base of The Pit I ran into Sally, and when I say ran into her I mean I ran **into** her.

"Oof," I grunted as I collided with a body coming round the corner and fell on my arse.

"HEY! Watch where you're- GEORGIA!" she squealed as she recognised it was me sprawled on the ground at her feet. Before I could respond she lifted me to my feet and pulled me in for a tight hug, "you're okay!"

"Can't. Breathe." I jokingly teased.

"Oh, sorry!" she apologised as she released me. "How are you? We weren't sure you would be okay. We were so worried about you!"

"I'm okay, just tired," I shrugged. "I didn't sleep well so went for a run instead. Wait, more importantly, how are you?"

"I'm good thank you, no injuries or anything thanks to you – which we **really** need to talk about later by the way. Oh, and are you allowed to be training so soon?" her face scrunched in concern.

I snorted, "no idea, but I'm not going to let them stop me - I feel fine." I shrugged before I indicated for her to follow me back down, "but I do need to head back to the infirmary. Gotta freshen up and see if they will let me go. I promise I will talk about it later, just let me know when."

"Okay, do you want me to get you some breakfast?"

"That would be great actually," I smiled at her, "thanks."

"No problem, I'll see you in a bit," she informed me, waving slightly as she peeled off to the dining room.

I returned the gesture and continued down the hall smiling, I really hoped they would release me for the day to train with them, I liked my new friends a lot and we had become fairly close for the short time we had known each other. I was grateful for their company every day here.

It turned out that the staff were **not** happy to let me go, but I wasn't really giving them a choice in the matter. I was fairly sure that today would be knife throwing practice seeing as it was the day after capture the flag and, as I pointed out to them, if I was capable of going for a run then I could train with the rest of the initiates. They reluctantly let me go after I had showered and been checked over for the last time.

I walked into the dining room with a grin plastered on my face. I was feeling great, I had managed to save my friend, I had my super cool camo on for the first time – oh, and there was Sally with a large tray of food just for me. Life was good this morning. I even got comments on how cool my camo was and questioned where I got it from as they wanted some too!

Not too long later we walked into the training room, passing a table of knives by the door as we did, to see the targets set up along the opposite wall. I smiled to myself, knife throwing, fun times.

Unfortunately, my smile faded upon seeing a very pissed off Eric. Just like in the book, he was **mad** that he had lost at capture the flag to Four. This guy really disliked losing, **especially** to Four. Worse still, I was on the team that beat him, which earned me a glare from the second I walked through the door until everyone had arrived. ' ** _Greeaaattt_** _, this is gunna be fun. Let's just hope he doesn't pick on anyone like in the book – especially as that person is likely to be me…'_

"Tomorrow will be the last day of stage one, your last day of fights so make them count," Eric said. "Because today, you'll be learning how to aim. Everyone pick up three knives and pay attention while Four demonstrates the correct technique for throwing them. Move!"

We all scrambled to get to the blades and each grab three. I quickly tested my bending on them to see what they were made of and whether I could manipulate them or not. They turned out to be made of steel and I could manipulate that without too much difficulty, directing them should be fine but changing their form would be hard. Not that I would need to do that but it was good to know I could.

"Man, he did not take losing well," Ben muttered under his breath from next to me.

"Of course not. I mean - he lost to Four and that's bad, there's clearly an old rivalry between them," I whispered back. "Just look at the looks he's giving Four."

"Watch carefully!" Eric thundered at us. As I said, bad mood.

Four took position in front of a target and begun throwing. I observed his motions carefully, from how he held the knife in his thumb and forefinger, how he extended his arm, when he released and how he breathed out as he threw. I only needed to briefly look at his stance to see it was not too dissimilar to how you would stand to throw a javelin.

After Four had demonstrated a handful of times we were ordered to line up and begin throwing. I carefully held the knife to imitate Four and slowly worked through the motions of throwing it a few times. Once I was satisfied I had the motion correct I threw at the target.

"Damn. I missed." I scowled at the target, not that the fact I missed was its fault. This was harder than I expected it to be, it had always seemed so easy in books and games - but then by now I should know that everything is harder in reality...

Ben snickered from my left side. "Yeah, same as everyone else. Try not to scare the target away there. Although maybe you'll get lucky and it will jump in fright and move into the path of your throw!"

I shot a glare his way but didn't respond to his jab, instead picking up another blade to try again. I took a deep breath and focused on my target while bringing my arm up, then threw. My blade landed on the target this time, although not where I was aiming… I smiled to myself, ' _still, it's better than my last attempt.'_

Hours later we had all gotten pretty good at throwing knives into targets so Eric called off training for the morning and told us to go get some lunch. As everyone else wandered to the mess hall, I stayed behind and picked up a bunch more throwing knives. I wanted to test something.

"Aren't you coming with us?" Sally asked from somewhere behind me.

"Nah," I called out over my shoulder, "I'm not hungry so I'm gunna stay here, you go ahead, I'll see you later."

"Okay, if you're sure…" she responded uncertainly.

"I'm sure. I'm gunna play with the sharp, pointy things!" I grinned borderline manically and waggled my eyebrows a few times to assure her. She laughed at my antics before calling me crazy - tell me something I don't know - and telling me to have fun with my pointy sticks.

Once she was gone and I was left all alone I flicked my hand to close the door behind them. ' _Time to have some fun,'_ I thought as I grinned to myself.

I played my music and the sweet drum solo of 'Burn It Down' filled my mind as I planted my feet wide and thrust my hand towards the table of knives. Daggers flew towards me as I mentally commanded them to gather just behind me. Singing my head off as they followed my commands.

By the end of the first verse they were all obediently hovering above my shoulders and slightly behind me, so I focused my attention to the targets as I my body bounced along to AWOLNATION. Then the chorus began. For each time I sang "burn it" I snapped my throwing arm forward to impale a knife into a new target's chest, making my way down the line and back again. At first my throws were either way off target or didn't land blade first so fell to the floor, but gradually I found the best way to throw them was blade first without the usual spinning. After I figured that out my success rate and accuracy improved greatly.

The next verse I made smiley faces in two places on the wall before recalling all my blades to hover over my head. Then began the process all over again, singing and dancing to my heart's content with a massive grin on my face – this was so much fun.

By the time the song was done I had four knife made smiley faces grinning back at me with surplus scattered around. I smiled smugly at my handiwork as 'Move Your Feet' played on my shuffle playlist. "Yesss, I love this song! I am SO dancing to this!"

And boy did I dance. It is a very sad fact that I know the dance for this song from Just Dance 2. Move for move. Perfectly. I was a master at this dance among my friends. So I was dancing and singing the shit out of the song, to finish on an amazing high.

I was still grinning as I turned around to go get a drink when I saw Four leaning arms crossed against the door with his eyebrows raised at me in amusement. The grin fell from my face as I sobered in an instant. ' _FUCK. How much has he seen?!_ _'_

"Well that was . . . interesting," he comments slowly, "dancing huh, what next? Superpowers?" I snort in a mixture of relief and laughter, losing composure when he said that coupled with the fact that of **all** the songs that could play next, it was freaking Mozart. Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550 to be exact according to my teched up brain. I have the overwhelming urge to imitate ballet, now if he thought my dancing **before** was interesting…

"Something funny?" he asked intently.

"Yeah," I laugh again, "that wasn't even the worst of my dancing."

"Hmm," he grunted, unfolding his arms as he pushed himself off the wall and walked towards the targets. "Nice aim," he commented before taking one of the steel faces out of the wall and placing the daggers back on the table, "but, smiley faces, really? What is with you?"

I beamed at him whilst I walked past him to dismantle my next piece of art work, "what can I say, I like to have fun. Unlike somebody I know. **Cough,** you, **cough**."

I saw him give me a look of scepticism as we passed again so I could dump my burden. "I know how to have fun. I'm just not so juvenile about it, like somebody I could mention."

I smirked as we went to pass each other for the final time, "but being juvenile is half the fun of it." I promptly burst into a terrible version of ballet as I made my way back to the target.

I pulled out my last smiley face as I heard him chuckle under his breath at my antics and reply with, "maybe where you are from. You know, there are times when I just don't believe you are older than me."

I turned around to see him waiting for me by the table. I lightly snort through my nose with a sad smile as I walked to him, "that's because in many ways you are older than me. Age is just a number after all."

He moved from where he was leaning against the table to let my by with a confused expression, "what do you mean?"

I sighed as I dropped the knives to turn to look at him and earnestly say, "you've probably lived more and had to grow up a hell of a lot faster than I have, that's all. I had a very different childhood to you." I could see he was about to reply, but was interrupted by the stream of students that had come back early from lunch, ending our conversation.

The afternoon passed without incident, just the monotonous sound of knives being thrown into the wall with the odd clang of one that fell to the floor. Sally cornered me as we left the target room, whispering, "can we have that talk now?" as we exited.

"Sure thing," I replied under my breath. This resulted in Sally grabbing my arm and pulling me off down a random hallway that had nobody in it. She let go of me and we started walking slowly along as I waited for her to say something.

"I'd like to know what happened last night Georgia?" she timidly requested.

"Well, a building fell on us…" Sally gave me a sharp look and I relented, "a building fell on top of us when you tripped up, I threw myself over you to try and shield you as much as I could."

"Thank you for that," Sally cut in.

"You're welcome," I absently replied before continuing with my explanation, "luckily the building collapsed in such a way that gave us a pocket of safe space. But I don't understand Sally, you were conscious for all this, it should be me asking what happened after I blacked out."

"Nothing important happened, and I want to know because everyone keeps saying we shouldn't have made it out of that, they are sure of it. I don't understand how we are still alive."

"Luck? I don't know Sally; why would I know?" I shook my head at her, this was going in a direction I wasn't comfortable with.

"Because you got me out of there."

"Me? I didn't do that much. Just made sure we found a way out."

"Yes but how?" She had pulled me to a stop at this to look me in the eye. "You got us out through a perfect tunnel that shouldn't have been there, one that collapsed the moment we were through it! It doesn't make sense."

"Well why would I have anything to do with it? Sure I pushed some stuff out of the way to get us out of there but I can't move buildings Sally. I don't know what happened, frankly I don't remember much from losing consciousness." I shrugged and continued walking along, hoping she would do the same.

"But that makes no sense," she muttered after thankfully catching up with me.

"I know it doesn't," I briefly glimpsed her way to see her confusion, "but I'm not going to question it and just be grateful that the building held up a tunnel long enough for us to escape out of. We got lucky." I finished with a shrug as we arrived at the cafeteria.

"Yeah you are right Georgia, I should be grateful we were so lucky." She shook her head as she continued to say, "and of course you had nothing to do with it, as you said you can't move buildings, nobody can."

"It would be pretty cool if they could though, eh," I said jogging her with my shoulder, "now c'mon let's go eat, I'm starving."

Sally laughed at my comment. "Well of course you are! You didn't eat lunch, I told you that wasn't a good idea."

I stuck my tongue out at her and told her to shut up and get her food, without telling me "I told you so" which she ignored and did anyway.

An hour after an eventless dinner, I made my way to the cafeteria to wait for whoever was going to escort me that night, I figured that Four must have found a person by that point after I had skipped a few sessions. I only had to wait a few minutes when I heard a voice from behind.

"You ready to go?"

"Yeah," I said turning to face my escort, "I'm rea- wait, Four?"

"Were you expecting someone else?"

"Well, yeah. I thought you would've got someone else to run around with me by now."

He just shrugged, "nobody was particularly fond of the idea of extra training."

I raised one of my shoulders in acknowledgment, "I can understand that. C'mon then."

We walked up to the surface and headed outside, the sun lazily setting in the distance gave the city a slightly haunted look, casting long shadows over the battered roads as we jogged along. We must have been about halfway through the run when Four spoke up.

"How are you feeling?"

I threw a look of confusion his way as I slowed slightly to talk before huffing, "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"Because you had a building fall on you yesterday," he bluntly replied.

He had a valid point there. "Yeah, I'm fine. Got ridiculously lucky to come out of that unscathed. Thank god for Triangles of Life."

"Triangles of life?" At this point we slowed to a walk so we could talk easier.

"Yeah. It's a theory on the safest places to be when an earthquake hits a building. If you look at the rubble of a building there are often pockets of space all over the place, always in the shape of a triangle. It's called the Triangle of Life, cause you can survive in them. Think of it like building a card tower, two beams leaning against each other will create a sturdy triangle of space underneath them where a person can hide. It's just a theory that it's the safest place to be, but either way I'm alive cause we managed to have one form over us."

"Ah," he said quietly.

I glance over at him in concern, "you okay there?"

"Hmm. Oh yeah, I'm fine. I'm just thinking about how lucky you two were."

"Haha. You're telling me. God knows how we got out of that alive…"

We both drifted into our thoughts after that and didn't speak again as we picked up the speed. Now I think about it, everyone had been quieter than normal that day. I guess they were all in shock from the building collapse, I heard that that kind of thing hardly ever happens and usually nobody is caught up in the rubble. It must have been a bit of a shock.

We took a new route for my run that day, so on the way back we passed an old, abandoned park for the first time. As we jogged by I saw a large swing set in the middle of the playground and I couldn't resist. I ran over to it with the full intention of playing on them, squealing, "oooooh, swings!" as I vaulted the mostly intact metal fence.

"What on Earth are you doing?" Four cried out to my retreating form.

"What does it look like dumbass," I called back as I reached the swing set and grabbed the seat of one of the least damaged sets. They were too low for what I wanted, so I sent the battered rubber sailing over the support beam, until the chains had wrapped around the bar enough that it rested above my waist. "I'm playing on the swings," I beamed at him as I turned, grabbed a chain in each hand hauled myself onto the elevated platform.

I flung my body backwards and kicked my legs out to begin gaining momentum, as my feet were miles too high above the ground to get any kind of kick off. I slowly began accelerating as Four arrived at the edge of the frame with an incredulous expression on his face. Once I had built enough momentum a few seconds later, just as Four opened his mouth to say something, I slid my hands to the bottom of the metal links and grasped them firmly as I shifted in my seat with a smirk. Then, at the height of my swing, I pitched backwards until I was completely upside down, hanging from the chair by my knees, hearing Four cry out in alarm as I did.

I whooped with glee as my body sailed through the air, my fingers grazing the remains of the spongy surface under the equipment as I let go of the chains and stretched out my arms to feel the wind flow through my hands. As I flew past Four he shot me a look of frustration, to which I responded with a shit-eating grin and a laugh of excitement.

"Stop being so immature, you are like a giant 4-year-old!" he screeched at me as I shot back past him.

I laughed jubilantly, "no I'm not!"

"Well you sure aren't acting like you are 19!" he yelled frustratingly.

"Yeah, ye-"

I stopped short as I realised something. ' _I'm NOT 19 any more!'_ I froze in shock at the realisation. This of course caused me to promptly fall off the descending swing with a yelp of stunned shock as I landed heavily on my back. I lay there in a daze as I double checked my maths. I was right. I counted eight days since I was abducted, maybe more if you counted the exact hours, and I was certain I was out for a day after being taken away if they operated on me. Either way, I had turned 20 at some point over the last day or so. It was my birthday and I had **forgotten**. I. FORGOT. MY. OWN. BIRTHDAY! How on Earth, had I managed that?!

I finally noticed Four's face hovering over me, an odd mixture of concern and agitation written on his features. The world came back into focus while I was sprawled out on the ground, to hear Four asking me what happened and if I was okay.

"I – I – I – it - it's…" I stammered, blinking rapidly as I tried to wrap my head around the fact I was no longer a teenager and hadn't even realised it. "I . . . I'm twenty now," I finally managed to sputter out.

Now it's his turn to be surprised as his eyes widened to say, "wait, what? Since when?"

"I - I'm not exactly sure. But I know it was my birthday either today or yesterday."

"What do you mean you aren't sure? How do you not know when your birthday is?" scepticism laced his voice as he spoke.

I sighed, "that's a complicated story, but lets just say I'm not exactly sure when I was born."

He looked stunned for a moment before recovering quickly to congratulate me with a small smile, "well, happy twentieth birthday Georgia!"

I returned the gesture with a soft laugh and said, "thanks. A little help here?" as I reached an arm up for some assistance. He sighed before snagging my hand and pulling me to my feet. I dusted myself off quickly and we wordlessly headed out of the park with Four closely behind.

It wasn't until we arrived back that we spoke again. Surprisingly it wasn't even me that broke the silence as we stood stretching.

"So how are you going to celebrate?"

I looked at him, confusion written all over my face as I said, "celebrate what?"

He returned my look. "Er, your birthday . . . people tend to celebrate growing a year older."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, I dunno maybe eat some cake if they serve any," I shrugged. I wasn't exactly feeling the overwhelming desire to celebrate my birthday here. It was all I had thought about on the way back, that all the people I **should** have been celebrating with were in an alternate dimension. Sure I had Sally and Ben, but it just wasn't the same and it would have felt wrong somehow.

"That doesn't sound like a celebration," Four announced dryly as he stared at me in disbelief.

I snorted before walking into the building and muttering to him, "that would be because it isn't." He didn't say anything in reply, nothing unusual there though, so I waved in the general direction of behind me before I jogged back to the dorm.

There was nobody around when I arrived so I decided to take the opportunity to treat myself to a nice long shower, it was my birthday after all. I think I was in there about half an hour by the time I got out, I wasn't really paying attention. Hey, don't judge, you can't take these things for granted as a time traveller, I might end up in the middle ages next for all I knew, and **boy** would I miss showers then!

So anyway, when I finally dressed in a red polo and black jeans - curtesy of Dauntless clothing incorporated - I was fully prepared to be yelled at as I left the bathroom for being in there so long. What I was not prepared for was to be jumped and blindfolded by two unknown people.


	10. So, it's my birthday

**{PROPER AN: Okay so I didn't post a second chapter last week like I promised I would and I am so sorry, I got major writers block for the first time since starting and it really sucked and I have no idea if this is a good chapter or not but it's all I got so I hope you like it...}**

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Georgia: Hello again everyone! So Altaïr is still being a bitch, and no I'm not kidding about describing his behaviour that way. *pinches bridge of her nose* He is driving me up the wall, seriously, I had to send him out a shopping run to get us some supplies, half of which I had to freaking make up just to get him out of here. Anyway I figured I would use this time to quickly send this off to Justagenericusername without his interference or whining. Which brings me to my main point, enjoy the chapter because I'm off to enjoy the rest of my Altaïr free time while I still can, so adios to you all. *goes to turn off camera but pauses* Oh and please review *frowns* nobody has been reviewing recently...it makes me worried nobody is enjoying my story...

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 **How did I forget it was my birthday?!**

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"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON?!" I yelled in confusion as I wriggled violently.

"You say the strangest things you know. And will you stop struggling, it's just us," a voice I recognised said from my left as I was pulled forward.

"Ben! What is going on?!" I asked in an ever so slightly calmer manner after I stopped trying to get away.

"That's for us to know, and you to find out later," Sally said from my other side as I felt myself be steered along through the halls.

I groaned in annoyance but said nothing as I was marched through the Dauntless compound. I really hated being blindfolded, so with each step, although slightly difficult with my shoes between my feet and the earth, I sent a seismic wave out so I could see where I was being dragged by my friends. It was at that moment I really understood what Toph meant when she said she could see without seeing and that being blind really didn't hinder her. I could possibly even see more than I would **with** my eyes. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the young, blind earthbender.

I quickly realised I was being led to the bottom of The Pit, and "saw" a bunch of people standing around that looked to be waiting for us. I say that because they all perked up and faced the three of us when was got closer. My friends took my blindfold off and I barely caught sight of the group of teenagers before I was deafened by the sound of yelling.

"SURPRISE!"

"Wait, what?" I was thoroughly confused for a heartbeat, but the penny dropped pretty quickly. They had set up a surprise birthday party for me!

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Sally and Ben chorused from each side of me. I felt a massive grin stretch over my face. I definitely had not been expecting this, but it was a pleasant surprise in comparison to the last I had experienced.

"Thank you guys!" I exclaimed as I spun around and pulled my two friends into a hug.

"Don't thank us," Sally said from inside my left arm, "thank Four, it was his idea, we just helped him out a bit."

"Oh." I let go of my friends and turned around to scan the crowd for our resident party planner. I spotted him standing off to the side with him arms folded, looking more than a bit out of place if I was honest. So I shouted out to the room, "let the party begin!"

People soon started talking and heading for a table of food on the other side of the room while I headed over to Four. He raised an eyebrow as I got closer and said to me, "you are supposed to be over there, with everyone else, partying."

"I know I am, but it would be incredibly rude of me to not thank the person responsible for me **having** a party in the first place, wouldn't it?" I sarcastically replied with my arms crossed in defiance. But I quickly dropped them to sincerely say to him, "so, thank you for setting up a surprise birthday party for me, you really didn't have to so it means a lot." I gave him a large grin to show my appreciation.

He smiled back and said, "you're welcome, and I did have to. It's not a proper birthday without a party of some sort. Now get back over there," he finished, making shooing motions at me to go and join the others.

"I'm going, I'm going. Bossy boots," I grinned at him and darted off back to the group of chatting teenagers before he could ask the question that was clearly written on his face.

Half an hour later we had eaten almost all of the party food and sung happy birthday before eating the cake, sadly all I managed to eat was a slice of cake as I had been too busy receiving congratulations and having people talk to me. But, to be honest, seeing as my 19th birthday was spent clubbing, I was getting a bit bored. There was no pounding club music at the party due to Amity being the only musical faction that had nothing like what I was used to, and the music in my head only went so far seeing as I couldn't dance to it without looking like a complete lunatic. So instead I snuck off to find some alcohol.

' _Alcohol will liven things up a bit_ ,' I thought to myself as I hunted around The Pit to see if there was a liquor store or something along those lines. You see I'm shy when in a large group of people that I don't know well and have to socialise with, especially as I was the centre of attention most of the time, so some alcohol would loosen me up a bit and I could have some fun. I found a shop after a few minutes of searching, but I knew I would be checked for ID – which I had absolutely none of – so made a plan . . . kinda.

Frankly I'm not exactly sure **how** I managed it, but 3 minutes later I had a bottle of whisky in my hand. ' _SCORE!'_ I grinned to myself as I walked back to the party. I unscrewed the lid and took a large swing of my favourite spirit, feeling the satisfying burn as the liquor went down my throat. ' _Not bad,'_ I thought to myself as I compared it to my go to drink, Jack Daniels - although usually it was with Coke or similar which masked the taste a bit.

I took a few more gulps while meandering my way back to the others, and once I re-joined the party I made a beeline for the table with all the other drinks - keeping my prize out of everyone's sight. Because of course I was supposedly only 17, and that's too young to drink, at least I assumed that the age limit hadn't changed…

I made it to my destination, albeit with some suspicion aroused by my fellow initiates, but not Four and that's what was important. I poured myself a double shot and downed it before anyone could realise what I was doing, then hid my bottle under the table.

"What was that?"

Shit, it was Ben. "Nothing," I said as innocently as I could manage after being sketchy as fuck.

"Uh huh," a smirk grew on his face as he raised an eyebrow. ' _Aw_ _ **come on**_ _, he can do that too!'_ I whined to myself as he said, "yeah, no way I believe you. What have you got that we aren't supposed to have?"

I sighed before throwing him a cheeky smile and pulling the bottle out to show him. "You can't tell Four," I whispered as his eyes widened at the sight, but he didn't say anything, just nodded in confirmation without taking his eyes off the bottle. "Want some?" I asked, curious about how he would answer.

"Er, no. I'm okay thanks."

"Cool. More for me," I said shrugging, before taking another swig out the bottle and gasping as the liquid hit the back of my throat. He shook his head at me but didn't say anything as I re-screwed the bottle and placed it under the table, out of everyone's view. Once I had stood upright again I saw Four giving me a suspicious look from across the room, so I waved like a lunatic at him with a large innocent grin on my face. I was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol I had drunk while I walked down the hall and it was making me very excitable, the lack of food in my stomach had make the alcohol hit my system faster than usual.

Speaking of food, I walked to the front of the table and grabbed myself a large slice of heavily iced chocolate cake – my favourite! I stood leaning against the table, plate in one hand and fork in the other, observing the teenagers around me that were supposed to be having fun but sadly were not. ' _I need to do something to liven things up here, or they are going to get very bored quickly,'_ I decided.

While munching away at my slice I thought over everything I could do to get people excited and having fun – not an easy task when faced with twenty plus bored sixteen-year-olds. Luckily just as I was finishing my cake I came up with a couple of good solutions, in the form of party games. Just in time too, as the group of initiates were looking like they would leave any moment.

"Right! TIME FOR BULLDOG!" I yelled into the crowd with a grin after putting my plate back on the table, the alcohol making me confident in ways I normally would not be. I mean, trying to get a bunch of teenagers to play kids games . . . not something I would usually attempt to do. "EVERYONE LINE UP AGAINST THE WALL ON ONE SIDE OF THE PIT!"

"What's bulldog?" a random voice called out from the crowd as they walked over and lined up to the right side. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Four looked equally confused.

I dramatically gasped and mocked receiving a blow to the heart before saying in an equally overdramatic tone, "you don't know what bulldog is? I am wounded. Thoroughly shocked." I stood up straight from where I had almost collapsed on the ground in my little show, saying "but I shall explain to you how it works," as I walked over to stand in front of them.

I stood facing them for a few seconds before beginning to pace back and forth in front of them, "bulldog is a game of strength," I said in a military manner, "speed, and endurance. We can do a practice round if you want, but the aim of the game is simple, all of you," I ran a pointed finger along the line of awaiting targets, "need to get from this side of The Pit to the other." I stopped pacing and spun around to point at the far side of the open space with a flourish, then took a few steps forward and turned to face them again. "BUT, in the middle is a bulldog – in this case me – who's aim is to stop you lot by catching them or tapping them or, in some violent cases, tackling you to the ground and saying "bulldog; one, two, three". Those who are caught join the bulldogs in the middle and help capture those left, the last person standing wins and is bulldog for the next round. Any questions? Do we need a practice round?"

I paused for a moment to see a line of shaking heads until someone piped up, "wait, are the bulldogs not allowed to capture us at some time?"

My eyebrows shot up at that, ' _damn, forgot about that.'_ "Right, my bad. If you are touching a wall either side, you are deemed as safe. You can stay touching the start wall for 20 seconds after I say to start, but do so at your own peril cause you have to run before then and if you don't you are immediately a bulldog. Any other questions?" I paused for a few seconds to let anyone speak as I casually took a few more steps back. "Nope? No practice round? Good. Then . . . GO!"

Every single one of them charged towards me as soon as the word left my lips. ' _No strategy at all,'_ I tutted inside my mind as my eyes fixed on Ben near the centre of the pack. ' _Target acquired,_ ' I smirked at him as I barrelled towards him, made quick work of seeing through his feint to the left and tagged him right in the centre of his chest. "Bulldog; one, two, three," I said with the smirk never leaving my face. He sighed in disappointment and pouted at his misfortune, but I barely noticed as I was racing off in the opposite direction to catch an unsuspecting slacker.

Obviously Aaron and a few others had thought I was too preoccupied in catching Ben so I wouldn't try or be able to catch them. How wrong they were. I sprinted up behind Aaron and tagged him in the back, clinging on to his shirt. "Bulldog; one, two, three," I shouted, "GOTCHA!".

"Nooo," he wailed as he came to a halt to glare at me. "Wait, you already got Ben though!"

"There is no rule against catching more than one person a round," I smirked at his attempts to weasel his way out of being caught.

"What? Ugh. Fine," he grumbled as he stomped past me back towards Ben. I grinned and turned around and walked over to join them.

"Right, you two spread out wherever you want. Don't be scared to use some force to get them, we are Dauntless after all. Let's do this," I held out my fists towards them. They looked at me confused, "you are supposed to pound them," this only caused the confusion to intensify. So I pounded my fists together to demonstrate the action, this seemed to register and they quickly formed a hand each into fists and held them out towards me, I grinned and pounded them as I repeated my earlier statement.

We broke off and took up positions across the room, each of us giving our opposition the stink eye and sneering at them, I even went as far as taunting them. Then I suddenly shouted, "GO," in an attempt to catch them off guard. It took them a second to register what I had said before they started running towards us bulldogs, but by that time I had already made a beeline for my dear friend Sally. I quickly tagged her without much fuss before catching sight of Zeke on my far left.

' _This should be fun…'_ I smiled to myself as I headed in his direction. The others parted like the red sea in an attempt to avoid me as they thought I was heading for them, which made my run to him faster and easier. It didn't take me long to end up on his heels, ' _damn this dude is fast,'_ I noticed frustratingly. But it wasn't going to stop me. ' _He is_ _ **mine**_ _,'_ I thought as I leaped forwards and rugby tackled him to the ground, both of us landing hard on the ground. "Bulldog; one, two, three!" I exclaimed with delight at my take down before climbing off him.

"Ow," he complained as he lay there, "that hurt!" He rolled over to stare at me accusingly, "you didn't have to tackle me!"

I rolled my eyes and replied, "yeah I did actually. You were too damn fast for me to get any other way, why do you think I wanted you as a bulldog?" I winked at him as I held out a hand to help him up. He accepted it with a huff before grinning once he was upright again.

"Well, nice to know I'm wanted." I laughed at his reaction and clapped him on the back before regrouping at the centre with the others to see who else had been caught. It turned out they had each caught a kid, Ben had nabbed Allen and Aaron had caught Sarah, both good additions to my little team as they added strength and speed respectively. I indicated for them to huddle up.

"Okay, welcome new bulldogs, the game plan is simple for this round. I want each of you to spread out and pick out one person from the crowd that is in front of you, make sure they are in front of you so we don't pick the same people. Then I want you to heckle them, jeer at them, goad them, call out their name, single them out and when I say go, you get them by any means necessary. Sound good?" They all nodded, "then let's get 'em," I grinned evilly.

We spread out and I looked over the line to see who was in front of me, it turned out that Kyle was amongst those in my line of sight on the left side of the room. ' _Oh this will be_ _ **fun**_ _,'_ I thought evilly as I sent him my best 'I'm going to fuck you up' grin, which resulted in him looking slightly confused before glaring back. I heard the others calling their targets out and figured I should probably follow my own instructions, "you're next Kyle! This should be a piece of cake!" His glare intensified as I began heckling him, "you couldn't run fast enough to outrun an eight-year-old!"

"You're mine Steve!" Sally shouted from between me and the left wall of the room, "you might be big, but that makes you easy pickings for anyone who can move faster than a snail!" My eyes widened as I turned my head to look at Sally in shock. It couldn't be denied that she was brave enough to be Dauntless after this - despite being the smallest here, she had just outright challenged the biggest and strongest initiate. I mean sure she was **right** about him being slow and easy for someone like her to catch, but that doesn't mean you tell him that!

I shook my head and turned back to face Kyle, who looked slightly shocked by the outburst as well. My body tensed, ready to roll as I yelled, "ready. GO!" with the intention to try and catch him off guard. Unfortunately, it didn't work as Kyle took off immediately heading diagonally towards the centre of the room and I sped off after him. He was attempting to use the rest of the group to slow me down, I could see his heading immediately as he was going straight for the opposite side of the room to put as many bodies between us as he could. Sneaky bastard.

I shoved my way past a number of teens, stumbling a little as I did, not paying them any attention as I was too focused on my target. I imagine they were slightly confused at my lack of attempt at tagging them, but I didn't care as I had bigger fish to fry.

Kyle was getting close to the other side of the room by the time I was clear of the rest of the runners so I spurred myself on to go faster. Somehow I managed to move my feet fast enough to position myself behind my, now slightly panicking, target and threw myself at him just before he reached the wall. I wrapped my arms around his torso as I collided with him and we tumbled to the ground as I quickly said, "Bulldog; one, two, three," finishing just as we hit the ground.

I rolled off him immediately and yelled, "and the quarter back is **toast**!" before laying flat on my back while I caught my breath. Not that I was doing a very good job of it. By this point the whisky had kicked in fully and as I stared up at the ceiling of The Pit way, way above me I was giggling wildly at the absurdity of the situation. I was in an alternate dimension, hell I was in a freaking book, and I had just brought down Kyle in a game of Bulldog in Dauntless HQ with a bunch of initiates.

As I was giggling uncontrollably on the floor two figures appeared in my field of vision, "err, are you alright there Georgia?" one of them asked. I focused on the figure that had spoken, surprisingly it turned out to be Zeke who asked and he had brought Adrien of all people with him. Not so shockingly, Adrien didn't look too worried about my wellbeing and frankly I didn't figure out until later – later as in now as I am typing this, because frankly I didn't care before – that he was just there because Zeke had caught him near where I was lying last round.

"Heheh," I chuckled, "I'm good, I'm great, super happy!" I grinned at them as Adrien rolled his eyes and walked off before I was surprised by a loud hiccup escaping my mouth. That was new, I don't remember hiccupping before . . . not that I cared that much at the time.

Zeke looked down at my grinning face with growing concern written all over his features, aw nice to know he cared, so I placated him and said, "c'mon and help me up will you?" I held my arms up and waved my hands around a bit in invitation slash demand, he sighed as he grabbed my hands and hauled me off my arse. "Thanking you, kind sir," I told him as I dusted myself off, ' _damn there is a lot of dust on me_.'

"Are you sure you are okay?"

"Yeah, I-"

"What happened? What did you do Georgia?"

"I didn't do anything!" I protested as I whipped my head around to see who was accusing me. Turned out it was Ben who had come to check up on me, no surprise seeing as he was the only one who knew about my intoxication, light intoxication I should add – I'm just a silly person by nature that comes out much more when under the influence. "Jeez, a girl laughs about falling on her arse and suddenly everyone thinks she has lost her mind. Yeesh, take a chill pill," I said as I walked past Ben and patted his shoulder a couple of times to calm him down.

"Take a what now?" Ben asked as he followed behind me back to the centre of the room.

I started walking backwards and told him that it just meant 'calm down' before turning back to face the way I was walking. While it was meant to be a fairly graceful move, it was quite the opposite when I lost my balance and stumbled to the point where I would have face planted if it hadn't been for Ben grabbing me.

"Uh huh, sure you are fine..." he said knowingly as he righted me. I just stuck my tongue out at him and continued walking to the other bulldogs – who were now the majority of the initiates, only five remained to be caught now. They had done a good job last round.

"Alright bulldogs, lets finish this!" I told them as I got near them. "Group up and pick someone to take down, I'll be at the far end with Zeke picking up anyone who gets through you all but I don't expect that to happen." They all nodded in acknowledgment and started bunching together to pick who of the five they were going to catch. I motioned to Zeke as he was walking over to follow me to the one end of the room, he shot me a slightly confused look but followed me to the back of the room regardless. "We are in charge of catching any stragglers that manage to get through the line."

"Ah," he inclined his head as he acknowledged softly, wasn't that difficult to accept his role here or why he had been given in – the guy was freaking fast on his feet. He stood peering around and shifting in place, looking sort of unsure where to go, so I told him to go stand on one side of the room while I took the other. As I staggered slightly over to my position I glanced over our line of bulldogs to see if they were ready – they were and were already heckling the runners, there were really getting the hang of being bulldogs now. ' _My babies are growing up,_ ' I thought complete with fake weeping inside my head, ' _I'm so proud… Man, I amuse myself sometimes.'_ I mentally shook myself, _'no Georgia, focus, stop farting around.'_

"Alright you lot, lets make this the final round! Aaand . . . GO!" I watched as the five take off like a shot, scattering in all directions to try and spread us too thin to catch them. Not that it worked, in less than a minute four of the five were tagged and the last person – Dan – won by a matter of seconds by simply being the last caught. I remembered him from capture the flag, he was a fast kid and good at getting out of tight situations it seemed, something very useful for this game. ' _None of them even made it close to reaching me or Zeke, which is probably a good thing seeing as I'm feeling my balance go...'_

We all went over and crowded around him to congratulate him on his win, I carefully walked over and said my part then left, after all it is only a game. But it seemed that the others didn't quite understand that. I watched on, swaying slightly where I stood, with a mixture of amazement and confusion as a group of the stronger guys hoisting Dan onto their shoulders and walked around, cheering their heads off for a good five minutes about him being the winner of bulldog. Finding it much more amusing that normal I smiled at their antics – they didn't even know what that meant and probably didn't remember what winning resulted in, at least if we played again.

As I watched them walk around, I saw Four leaning against a wall to one side of our little 'pitch' with a pleasantly entertained look on his face. Of course the ever stoic Four would not properly smile at such things - he was such a hard arse before Tris knocked some sense into him, good thing she did come along and loosen him up or I wouldn't have liked him so much in the books.

In the midst of my musings Sally sidled up to me to ask with a hopeful look on her face, "are we doing another round?"

I looked at her with a smile, "we can if enough people want to, go and find out if most people want to go again." A very excited Sally grinned at me before bounding off to question everyone she could find, desperate to play another round. "Heehee, silly Sally," I said to myself as she moved around the room, "heh heh, alliteration, good one Georgia. Funny Georgia."

"Are you okay?"

I yelped and took a step back to see who was talking to me when I tripped over my own feet, lost my rapidly dwindling balance and promptly landed on my arse. Four stood over me with a slightly amused expression, smug bastard, it was his fault I was on the floor so I somewhat indigently replied, "I **was** , until you made me fall over and look like an idiot, thank you very much for that by the way." I held out my hand so he could help me up but he just stood there, "are you going to help me up? Or just stand there like a wet lemon?"

His features morphed into a look of confusion and mild distaste at being called a wet lemon and didn't help me up. Instead he left me to pick myself up off the floor as he voiced his confusion, "what do you mean by 'stand there like a wet lemon'? What do lemons have to do with this? And why is it wet?"

I sighed and shook my head slightly at yet another useful phrase having been lost to these wonderful people. "To stand there like a wet lemon basically means you are standing around being idle and useless. I think it was a politer version of an old saying – 'standing about like a spare prick at a wedding' or something similar," I explained from what I could remember. I looked it up once upon a time as I also didn't know the exact meaning, just the general knowledge that it meant 'don't stand around and do nothing like an idiot', oh the strange things I remember.

"Ah. Alright then," he replied before a silence fell over the two of us. I shuffled awkwardly, unsure as to why he came over here as I knew it wasn't to simply stand next to me as we watched the others debate whether to play another round. I was about to open my mouth to say something when he beat me to it, "where did you get the alcohol Georgia?" he bluntly asked, getting right to the point as usual.

"What alcohol?" I lied smoothly. Or at least I thought I had until he replied.

"Don't lie to me. I can see you are drunk, as could anyone else who knows what it looks like. So just tell me where it is."

"Nope! Neevveerrrr!" I shouted as I ran over to where the group of sixteen-year-olds had clearly come to a decision to play another round, "you'll never take me alive!" I careered into the group and was caught by Ben and Zeke, who were about to ask me something but I cut them off to ask excitedly, "soooo, are we playing another round?"

"Yes!" Sally exclaimed as she bounced with excitement from the other side of the little circle that had formed. "Who starts as bulldog?" she questioned me.

"That would be Danny boy," I looked over to him with a grin, "so get in position everyone!" We all hurried over to our positions and played round after round after round of bulldog until we were all exhausted.

For me the rest of the night passed in a slightly alcohol induced blur of running teenagers, yells of victory and cake - all in all, it ended up being an awesome birthday party that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was certainly one of the most violent I had ever attending as a number of us retreated to the dorm that night spotting some rather impressive bruises, that were certain to be even more so the next morning and would only get worse during our last day of physical training.


	11. Well this won't be good

Georgia: Hello everyone! I have amazing news for you all, Altaïr has **finally** healed, at long last he has stopped being a pain in my arse!

Altaïr: *from off screen* You are aware I am in the room, correct?

Georgia: Oh yeah, I am fully aware that you can hear every single word I am saying. *looks over with a wry look* I just don't give a shit.

Altaïr: Watch your language!

Georgia: How about...*pretends to think about it* no. I don't feel like it after all you've put me through recently! *looks back at us* Anyway, I won't drone on and on, please read and enjoy. *smiles*

* * *

 **Well this won't be good...**

* * *

It took me a long time the next day to wake up and although I had escaped the clutches of a hangover, I still wasn't exactly feeling great after the bodily harm that was last night's entertainment. I groggily stumbled around the dorm to get ready in a bit of a daze until I was the last one left in the room. Sally and Ben gave up attempting to hurry me for breakfast after a few minutes, deciding they were too hungry to wait for me. I think they might have said something about seeing me in the cafeteria, but I'm not sure as I wasn't really awake enough to register it.

It took stubbing my little toe on a bedpost as I went to put my shoes on to jog me into concentrating on the world around me. It was a rather painful way of doing so and I would not recommend it, a cup of coffee or even a cold glass of water to the face would have been a much more welcome method.

I was in the midst of hopping up and down while cursing violently when Four walked in. My previously open mouth snapped closed as I froze on the spot as he stood there with a bemused expression. "Er, hi there Four," I said with a sheepish grin, "what brings you here?"

"The sound of you cussing. Why aren't you at breakfast? It's the final day of training today so you better hurry."

"Right, right," I mumbled as I put my boots on quickly. I heaved myself onto my feet and trudged past Four into the corridor, pausing briefly to call back with a cheeky grin, "well come on then slow poke!"

Four snorted but followed me down to the cafeteria in silence, silence that frankly I couldn't be bothered to even attempt to break. I was too tired to come up with conversation he would find even remotely interesting, basically the only things I knew he would talk about were to do with training and that was stressing me out enough without talking about it extensively. I knew who I would have to fight later and I was very nervous, Steve was not someone you wanted to mess with. He was the best fighter in our group and it showed, unbeaten so far I was sure I wouldn't be the one to break his winning streak.

"You're unusually quiet this morning, hung-over?" Four commented with a smirk about halfway to our destination.

"Nope, no hangover. I'm just thinking, that's all, you should try it some time," I replied after sending a glare his way, I had hoped he had forgotten about the alcohol...

"About what? Your final fight today?" I gave a slight grunt in agreement with a shrug of my shoulders and Four continued on to say, "I wouldn't be too worried if I were you, you are a good fighter, remember that. You will be fine."

I gave him a sceptical look before replying, "you do realise who I am up against later today, right? He's a bloody tank and I am going to be squashed like a bug."

"What's a tank?"

"Something that is really difficult to defeat. Like Steve is. Which is why I don't stand a chance against him, not to mention the fact he is yet to be beaten and I really doubt I will be the one to do it as it would take a bloody miracle for that to happen and damn you Four, you've got me talking about the one thing I really didn't want to talk about this morning!" I took a deep breath once I had finished my little rant, both because I needed air and to try and calm myself down a bit.

"Why not?"

I gave an exasperated sigh, surely it wasn't **that** difficult to figure out! But I explained anyway, "because I am nervous enough as it is without talking about it and stressing myself out more." Four looked at me curiously for a moment, letting what I had said sink in before attempting to calm me down.

"Don't stress about it. Even if you don't win you will be fine, you are the second highest ranking transfer so you will move on to the next stage of training regardless of whether you win or not today." He placed a hand on my shoulder for comfort and I gave him a grateful smile in return.

"Thanks Four, that helped." He dropped his hand and told me he was happy to help, but this confused me slightly seeing as we hadn't exactly gotten off to a good start and I had pissed him off rather a lot. So I casually dropped in, "so what, are we cool now?"

"I'm sorry?" he asked, confusion lacing his voice.

"Are we good now? I mean, you didn't used to trust me and barely talked to me, now apparently you are happy to help me out. So I was just wondering…" I trailed off at the end because I didn't really want to presume anything about our relationship.

"I…" he paused for a moment, contemplating what to say, "I didn't trust you no, but with each day that passes and nothing out of the ordinary happens I trust your word a bit more. You said you came here to learn to be Dauntless and that is it, and you have been true to your word. Also…" he sent a small smile in my direction as he said, "you have grown on me. You might be a tad different then anyone else around here, but I like you, you're rather amusing to have around, not to mention one of the bravest initiates."

"Thank you Four," I softly smiled at him, but then decided this was getting a bit too mushy for my liking – especially seeing as it was Four talking to me – so replied with, "but don't you be getting all emotional and sentimental on me, it doesn't suit you right now."

He chuckled softly at my response as we walked into the cafeteria, "as I said, strange woman."

"Woman?" I queried with furrowed eyebrows.

"Yes, woman, why is this strange for you?" He picked up a tray and started gathering his breakfast as I followed suit, picking up my usual eggs and bacon but this time with a cup of coffee to go with it. Although I didn't have a hangover, I needed the caffeine to get me going that morning.

"Eh, I'm just not used to it. I don't think of myself as an adult yet really. I don't feel like one yet to be honest, I'm still to childish in too many ways. I dunno. In some ways I feel like I adult well, in others I know I'm nowhere close and it leaves me feeling too old to be called a kid but too young to be called an adult. It's weird." By this point we were walking over to the tables to sit and eat so I told him I would leave him alone to eat and walked off.

"Wait, join me." He flicked his head over to the table next to him, less of a question more of a statement. I hesitated before deciding it would probably be best to do whatever he wanted so slowly slid onto the bench seat opposite him. I was slightly nervous about the whole thing seeing as Four didn't really eat with people. "I only wanted to ask you something, don't look so nervous." I relaxed a bit before he continued to ask me, "what did you mean about feeling too young to be an adult, you have been one for years now, you are twenty after all."

"It's difficult to explain, to be honest I'm not even sure myself. I just don't feel responsible enough." I took a bite of my food but quickly swallowed when I thought of a better way of phrasing it, "no, scratch that. I don't feel **wise** enough to consider myself an adult. Frankly being an adult is terrifying. I could eat whatever I want right now, go pick a fight with one of the Dauntless leaders, get drunk out of my mind, do crazy shit that makes no sense to anyone, even me, and there isn't a thing you or anybody else could do about it. I am responsible for me, my actions, my decisions and living my life. I don't know if I'm ready for that . . . if I can do that."

 **Four's POV**

And there she goes confusing me once again. Why is being called a woman so odd for her? After all she has just turned twenty, so I queried why being addressed as such made her uncomfortable and listened to her answer as I gathered my food. I wasn't feeling particularly hungry that morning so only picked up some toast and coffee, watching Georgia pile her plate with protein – smart girl. Once she had said her part she quickly excused herself as I went to sit down, I could see that she was sure I wanted to be left alone but I couldn't let her do that when her answer had only perplexed me more.

She was tense as we took our seats at an empty table next to us. The initiates knew not to sit with me unless I wanted them to and although she couldn't see by sitting opposite me she was receiving a number of curious stares from her peers. I could tell she was uncomfortable sitting with me, understandable as I know I can be intimidating – and that's the way I like it. However, this time I needed her to be relaxed, after all I wanted an answer out of her, so calmed her by saying, "I only wanted to ask you something, don't look so nervous." I saw her visibly relax slightly and so continued to my question, "what did you mean about feeling too young to be an adult, you have been one for years now, you are twenty after all."

I listened intently to her answer and mulled it over as we ate. It made sense, I considered myself an adult but what Georgia said struck a chord with me, did I really feel responsible enough to call myself an adult? Georgia was now three years older than me and still didn't consider herself an adult. I still did stupid things, I still regretted decisions I'd made only the other week. But on the other hand I was in charge of training these initiates to become great members of my faction, I was responsible for them and to some degree whether they even make it to being a member or not. I'd never thought of it like that before, how much power I held over the kid's lives, she was right, it **was** a scary thought.

"Since when did you get so wise?" I asked upon finishing my musings. It had been a while since we last spoke, I didn't even realise how long until I noticed I had finished my food already.

"Um, I'm not?" she said, confusion etched on her face as her eyes flit around for some reason, maybe nervousness.

"That sounded wise to me, something I would expect to come from a Erudite transfer," I told her cocking my eyebrow, "is that where you are from?"

"Always with the questions about my past," she said chuckling lightly. I took a drink of my coffee but didn't say anything, hoping to get an answer. After sighing she spoke, "no I'm not, nor have I ever been, a Erudite and I don't think myself to be as wise as one." I was briefly amused when she used her cutlery to emphasise her point, waving it around a bit and pointing it at me before returning to stabbing her food.

"Really?" I watched her eat as I took a long sip of my drink before coming to a decision on the best way to phrase my point. "You sure do come out with a number of intelligent remarks or you "read it in a book somewhere" comments for someone who isn't Erudite…" I had a theory on this girl, and if it was correct she would be in a heap of trouble.

"Pssh just because I'm are brave doesn't mean I don't learn or read." I saw her freeze when she realised what she had just uttered, her eyes widened and darted around the room to see if anyone had overheard. I already knew nobody was within earshot, I had ensured we chose a table that was not as I wanted to question her to try and prove my suspicion. "Pretend you didn't hear that, okay?" She looked at me nervously and I stared levelly at her to respond.

"I won't say a thing, I promise. But I need to know for the next stage of training, what were your aptitude test results? It's important."

"I - I don't know… I never took the test…" she muttered, eyes dropping to the table, followed by her speedily shovelling more food in her mouth.

"How can you have never taken the test?" I was very confused by what she said and I'm sure it showed on my face. But really, who has never taken the test? She sighed deeply, put her head in her hands and started muttering to herself. Then I remembered, I had promised I would stop asking questions about her past and where she was from, this must have been a part of it. "Never mind. You don't have to say, I promised I wouldn't ask but I have and I apologise for that."

When I said this she put her elbows on the table and placed her mouth behind her lightly clenched together fists to look at me with a contemplating expression. We stayed like this for a little too long for my liking, my hands around my cup of coffee as we held each other's gaze. Finally, she broke it and propped her chin up to say, "it's okay. I can understand that it's a bit too odd for you not to question. But it doesn't change the fact that I am not saying much, if anything about my past."

And with that she went back to eating her breakfast. I sighed, I expected an answer like that given our previous interactions but I wasn't as bothered this time. Our relationship had changed since then, as I said earlier, she had grown on me and I no longer felt she was a threat. The incident with the building had only increased this progress, as I felt responsible and therefore guilty over what happened to her and Sally. She told me yesterday that I shouldn't feel guilty over something that was out of my control and she was right, but that was easier said than done, especially after the thoughts she had provoked only minutes ago.

I watched her as I continued to finish my drink, there was still so much I didn't know about her… Despite this I felt that I knew her enough that she was no longer a threat to any of us and I didn't have to worry about her, at least not in that way any more. I had a new problem to deal with regarding this initiate, was she Divergent? Because if she was, she was in danger. There was very little I could do to help her, and even less that wouldn't potentially result in me losing my position in Dauntless, but I was reluctant to see another person disappear. I decided I could at least hide it for as long as possible.

 **Georgia's POV**

"Four, we gotta go or we'll be late." I stood up and watched him blink himself out of his thoughts. As we tidied away our trays I briefly wondered what had him in such deep thought, he didn't often zone out in such a way. I got my answer as we walked to the fighting room together.

"What do you think your aptitude tests were?" He had lowered his voice so only I could hear him as we passed multiple people along the way, didn't want anyone finding out I was a fraud after all.

 _'Ah, now there is the million-dollar-question. What_ _ **do**_ _I think they would be?'_ My mind wandered over all of the possibilities but focused on the point I was fairly sure he was really questioning me about, would I be Divergent? Given my upbringing it was certainly possible, but who knows, I struggle a lot with honesty and my selflessness could do with some work if I was honest (haha – I did a thing). The society I came from was, to be blunt, mainly a selfish one - every man or woman for themselves. It rubs off on you.

"I . . . I really don't know. I've never really thought about it much before." My mind was whirling, trying to look at myself and my actions to think where I would fit best. "I know that I wouldn't be Candor, Aminty or Abnigation, as you well know I lie, I can be very selfish at times and I am far too violent for my own good. Ugh but I am also cowardly in some situations and really stupid at times too. Frankly I could be in all factions and none at the same time."

"That's not good." I turned to see Four looking at me concernedly, unsurprising as I think he was starting to believe I was Divergent, and he could be right for all I knew. Who could look at themselves subjectively enough to work out which faction they would be in? It was clear I couldn't.

"I know." I sighed deeply at the danger that was potentially looming just around the corner. We continued walking down the corridors in silence, neither of us wanting to acknowledge the huge arse elephant in the room because if we did it would be the start of accepting it as truth and neither of us wanted that to be the case. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly worried - certainly not as much as I was sure Four was as he didn't know that I wasn't sticking around very long and had an escape route if necessary.

It was a fair while later that I finally decided to break the stifling silence that had fallen between us by saying, "but whatever, I've got bigger fish to fry right now and fists to avoid being pummelled by."

"Don't make me say it again." Four gave me a sidelong look before walking through the door to our own little Dojo.

' _Right... I'll be fine. I can do this. I_ _ **can**_ _do this, right?'_ I took a deep breath before I stepped into the room after him and scanned the room for my friends, my eyes immediately landed on Steve causing me to freeze momentarily. He was **big**. Shit, I had forgotten how big he was compared to me.

' _No Georgia, shut up, you can do this,'_ I thought as I shook my head, ' _you are faster than him. You got this.'_ I forced my eyes onward until they landed on my friends standing in the corner, I smiled before making my way towards them.

"Georgia!" Sally greeted me with excitement, "you're just in time, we didn't see you all morning, where were you?

"I was around in the usual places, I was just a bit slower getting ready this morning, that's all." I shrugged before moving to stand next to them looking on to the fighting circle. "Who's fighting first?"

"I'm up first against Allen and Sally is against Liz third, you're right after Sally," he said nodding towards the board Four was writing on. I looked at Ben to try and gauge how he felt about his match, he seemed calm and collected, his face not giving away any emotions.

"Thanks. You two feeling ready for this?" I asked as I bounced around on my feet to try and get rid of my nervousness.

"Ready enough," Ben answered as he stared at his opponent. It made sense that Ben wasn't too worried about his fight, I mean Allen was good, but Ben was better. He lacked the precision Ben had when it came to landing hits. Sally replied in a similar fashion to him, she was faster and nimbler than Liz was, so would have a very good shot at winning if she kept her head in the game.

"What about you?"

"I - I'm a little nervous if I'm honest." I took another quick look at my competition and bit my lip, "…actually I'm a lot nervous. Ugh, lets be real here, I'm fucking doomed."

"For heaven sake, don't be so pessimistic Georgia." Ben nudged me with his shoulder, "if I know you, and I am started to get a good idea what you are like, you'll at least put up a good fight." He grinned at me reassuringly and looked like he was going to add something else when he was called over for his bout.

"Good luck," Sally and I shouted after him at the same time. I grinned and gave him a thumbs up when he paused to look back at us briefly before taking up his position at the edge of the ring.

Four signalled to start and Ben quickly dodged the wild swing Allen directed at his face. Then, before he regained he balance, Ben shot a sharp, precise jab to his face that flung him backwards and flat on his back. I winced slightly as the sound of him impacting the ground was heard through the room, ' _ouch, that's gotta hurt._ ' Ben moved forward to use his adversary's vulnerable position to gain an edge but couldn't get there before he rolled onto his feet and cautiously backed to the edge of the ring.

Shining crimson blood streaming down his face, Allen want on the defensive as he skirted around the edge of the ring to try and avoid Ben's well aimed attacks. He was partially successful, managing to only receive glancing blows that lacked the power Ben desired to cause any significant damage. Still, it was clearly wearing him down, thankfully faster than he was wearing himself down with his relentless assaults.

It wasn't long before Ben managed to gain another direct hit – actually it was even another punch to the face – causing Allen to reel backwards, keeping to his feet this time but almost out of the ring. Ben pressed his advantage and quickly followed it with a fast uppercut that sent the ex-Erudite flying (since when did Ben get so damn strong?!) backwards to land heavily outside the ring with a loud crack as the back of his skull smacked against the floor. Ouch.

Ben's skirmish was won with that impressive onslaught which led to Sally and I congratulating and quizzing him as we vaguely watched the second fight go down between two people we didn't really care about. Sally's fight was next, which of course she won as easily our friend won his own. Only, it was the complete opposite of his as she was the one dancing around the edge of the ring until she saw an opening to take her foe down. Then it was my turn.

I took a deep, calming breath and slowly walked over to one side of the ring at the same time Steve took his place opposite me. I swallowed thickly as he towered over me. ' _I' going to loose. I'm going to loose. Oooooh man, I am_ _ **so**_ _going to loose. I'm doomed.'_

Off to my right I saw my friends cheering for me enthusiastically while to my other side I saw Four give a stoic nod in my direction, I suppose his version of encouraging me. They believed I could do this, even if I didn't. ' _Right, well, if I'm going to lose I'm at least not going down without giving him hell first.'_

"GO!" Four called out to begin just as I came to my decision that I really should have thought of sooner.

Steve surged forward, aiming straight for me in an attempt to end our duel quickly, unfortunately for him I was expecting his exact move. I easily dodged the fist rocketing towards my face – we had all figured out fairly quickly that the fact was the best place to aim for when trying to end the match – but I didn't see the foot he hooked around my left ankle that sent me plummeting to the floor. I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could before he would be able to gain the upper hand due to my sprawled position.

I speedily backed away as I turned to face him once again. The tank of a sixteen-year-old was still approaching me but seemed slightly more cautious than his first assault. At this point I decided that the best form of defence was offence so moved in feigning a left hook to move in with a right kick that would remain unblocked. But…I guess he knew I favoured my right…

It seemed he was falling for the feint so I moved in with the kick, but at the last second he shifted right and grabbed my leg in the air. He quickly pulled on my appendage which frustratingly sent me spinning to the floor once again. Just as I was about to push myself up a huge weight landed on top of my helpless body, forcefully knocking the air out of my lungs when as suddenly as the weight arrived, it was gone. However, before I could regain any precious oxygen I was rolled over and a sharp elbow was rammed into my gut, causing me to loose the tiny amount of air I had left in my lungs in a painful gasp followed by a punch to the face that my disorientated with a painful and bleeding nose.

As soon as I could I gulped down some air that tasted and smelt of my coppery blood that ran into my mouth as I desperately rolled out of his reach, or so I thought. As I manoeuvred onto my hands and knees to get up I felt a huge force make contact with my delicate ribs that sent me sailing out of the ring until I rolled to a painful stop. I lay there wheezing with burning lungs and a torso that was screaming in pain for what seemed like hours before someone finally had the sense to ask if I yielded.

I gratefully agreed and the match was called. I lost. ' _At least I get to say "I told you so," that's a positive I guess.'_ I dimly felt two pairs of hands loop under my arms and pull me onto, what was presumably their, two sets of shoulders and started aiding me in what could only be described as a half-walking, half-dragging advance. I blearily opened my eyes I didn't even remember closing to see that my helpers were, of course, Sally and Ben. I managed to mumbled out a vaguely coherent "thanks" along with questioning our destination before having to shut my eyes again due to the light hurting them.

"We . . . you . . . infirmary . . ." I think I heard a female voice say, one I later realised was Sally.

I drifted in and out of awareness as I was taken to the infirmary, so the next thing I fully registered was my sore body being laid on a soft bed with various voices humming in the background. I opened my eyes again and saw a nurse hovering over me asking Ben and Sally questions. At this point she noticed me, she seemed surprised that I was awake and told me she was going to inject me with some painkillers. I hummed to indicate I understood so she promptly inserted the needle into my IV and depressed the plunger.

"That will help your…" she said once she finished injecting the drugs. And it sure did because even as she was ending her sentence the world was fading away into darkness.

* * *

Georgia: Ugh, yeah so that thoroughly sucked and was very painful. Not one of my favourite experiences I have to say. *grimaces then shakes head* Enough crummy topics, I want to thank you all very much for reading! Please review if you have the time, I would be very appreciative!


	12. An evening of rest

Georgia: Hey everyone, I'm so sorry this is really late and frankly I have no excuse because its not even an interesting chapter really. I'm a really slow writer and just haven't found the time to sit down and write this week, so apologies for that.

Altaïr: *nudges her* Don't forget your guest review.

Georgia: *grins* OOOOH, right! Thanks for reminding me. To my anonymous reviewer, do not worry because I am certainly going to continue my story, it just might take a while that's all. But thank you for your review regardless! It's brilliant to know that people are reading and enjoying my little book. So without further ado, the next chapter. *bows*

* * *

 **An evening of rest**

* * *

 _"…G…gia.."_

 _"…org…"_

 _"…Geor…"_

"…Georgia…"

"Georgia."

I slowly opened my eyes and blinked rapidly as my eyes became accustomed to the lights above me – luckily the lights in the medical rooms were dimmed for exactly this reason. I looked around to see Sally sitting next to me with a tray of food on her lap, while one of her hands rested on my right arm that she had been using to shake me gently and wake me up.

"Mmmm… 'ally?" I tried to speak but failed miserably as I found my mouth as dry as a desert. Super.

"Shh, don't try and speak," she told me gently as she placed the tray on my lap and put the glass of water from it into my hand. I got the hint and started drinking it in small sips – it rehydrates you better than large ones (I'm full of odd little tidbits of information)- as she ducked behind my bed. I suddenly found the top half of my body lifting slowly as I heard the echo of Sally's voice, "the doctor told me to get you to wake up and eat some food."

She reappeared at my bedside moments later, I assume once I was deemed to be sitting upright enough to eat, and ordered me to eat. I looked down at the plate of food with deliberation, because frankly it looked utterly tasteless and I was always wary of hospital food, even if I wasn't in a hospital I wasn't far off one and the food was of the same calibre.

However, I knew I had to eat something to get my strength back, so I sighed in resignation and picked up my knife and fork with a frown. "So what did I miss?" I asked before taking a large mouthful, because I was hungry after all. It was as I suspected, bland but "nutritious" – everybody's favourite kind of meal.

"Well you know what happened with my fight, and Ben's. Ummm… Kyle had to fight Aaron, they were fighting when we got back from bringing you here, which neither of them were very happy about… Well at least Kyle was until he beat Aaron. I can't remember who we missed but I do know that the results were to be expected. After Kyle won we saw Dan beat Beth and that was it. We did a bit of training and then Four dismissed us."

"'ounds 'un," I mumbled through my last mouthful of food – yeah, yeah, I know its bad manners. So sue me. "'ow –ong hav I bin ou'?"

"Out of what?" I rolled my eyes at once again finding another phrase that wasn't understood here as I finally swallowed my food.

"Unconscious," I replied before reaching for my water once more. Damn this dry mouth. "I mean the fact you've got me food probably means its time for dinner right?"

"Yes. You've been here for about, er, six hours I think." She stood up, took the tray from me and took it back down the hall, calling that she would be back quickly as she went.

I took the opportunity to take a look around and see who else got beaten up enough to wind up in here with me. There were fourteen beds in total – seven on each side – and three of them were currently in use. Yours truly was in the middle bed on the right side, an older Dauntless member was on the end of my row closest to the nurse's station, and the final bed a few to my left on the opposite row was occupied by a Dauntless born initiate I vaguely recognised from the other night. But don't ask me to name her because I really couldn't.

Sally reappeared when I had finished looking around and came back to sit next to me once again. We sat there talking for who knows how long, discussing what we thought about the other initiates, how we thought we were doing and anything else we could think of. That was only after Sally had asked me how I was feeling of course.

We were interrupted by two male voices echoing from the hallway, both of us looked over to the door as it opened to reveal Ben and Zeke walking in, deep in conversation. Zeke was animatedly waving his arms around to describe something that Ben looked very excited about. I was about to call out to them when Ben beat me to it.

"Hey Georgia, hey Sally!" He grinned as he walked over to my bed. "Nice to see you're awake at last, how does it feel to be Steve's personal punching bag?"

"Not great, I can assure you." I replied scathingly with a short glare in his direction before it morphed into a slightly evil smirk. "How come you haven't been at my poor sickbed like my bestest, loveliest, dearest friend Sally here?" His grin was quickly wiped from his face as he stumbled for a reply.

"I – well – it – you…"

I let him suffer for a few moments before letting my mischievous grin break through. "I'm just messing with you dude! How was dinner?"

A look of relief passed across his face before he returned the grin and replied, "boring without my two friends, if I'm honest. When do you get out of here so I can get my friend back?"

"Uuuhhhhh…" I looked hopefully at Sally who just shrugged with an apologetic look. "No idea, sorry. Hopefully as soon as freaking possible, I'll probably die of boredom otherwise. I'll bust myself outta here if I have to!"

Sally laughed. "Don't exaggerate. It's not **that** bad here."

"Yeah, we'll be here to stop you dying!"

"Wait, who's dying?" Zeke called out from across the room. "Georgia is dying? YES!" He fist-pumped with a grin before morphing into a fake upset display with a tone and pout to match. "I mean, oh dear. What a shame."

I snorted, "yeah, sure, you are sooo upset." My sarcastic quip was met by a grin from him before he went back to his conversation with his friend. "Hey! Zeke!" I called over to him, "who'd you get beaten up by today?"

"How dare you!" He said overdramatically, "I would never be beaten up. How dare you suggest such a thing!"

"I wouldn't get arrogant if I were you Zeke. There are better fighters than you here who I'm sure would love to put you in your place." Zeke's friend was grinning at him while the teen in question was glaring at Ben, but before he could get a word in to defend himself (and more importantly his pride) the injured girl joined in the teasing.

"You'd better watch your step Zeke, you wouldn't want to loose to a **transfer** …" She let her sentence trail off with a large grin while the three of us **transfers** laughed our heads off at her teasing.

"What's going on out here?" a stern female voice shouted from the other end of the room. Our grins were quickly wiped off our faces at the sight of the stern looking black haired woman with a piercing glare standing outside the office door with her hands firmly on her hips. The head nurse. "What's all this racket?"

"We were just cheering up Shauna and Georgia, Mrs Raiden. Don't worry about it, Sally already brought them their food."

"Ah. Ezekiel Pedrad. I should have known it was you causing trouble out here. Is your younger brother here to leave mayhem in his wake too?" She moved to crossing her arms as she scanned the almost empty room for Uriah. Who knows why, it was fairly obvious he wasn't here…

"No, just me today I'm afraid."

"Humph. Good." She uncrossed her arms and looked pointedly at us, "remember that you aren't the only ones recovering in here." She nodded in the direction of the older male in the bed next to her then swiftly spun on her heels to retreat back into her room.

"Known for causing trouble are you, **Ezekiel**?" Ben smirked.

Zeke rolled his eyes at Ben's poor attempt at a jab over his name before laughing as reminiscing smile graced his lips. "Ha. Yeah, my brother and I were in here frequently when we were children. We got into all kinds of mischief and might have been a bit disruptive when we ended up in here, which was pretty much every week for two months a few years ago."

"So they knew you very well in here then, and to keep a close eye on you when you did come," Sally commented with an amused smile. I was beginning to wonder if she had somehow fallen asleep in the uncomfortable chair next to me she was quiet for so long. But then the fact I just said it was an uncomfortable chair probably negates that particular option, so I'm not quite sure why I thought that.

"Well I wouldn't say that…" he replied smoothly, "but they do know us, yeah."

"Hey! Hey! Woah, woah. Wait a second." I glared accusingly at Zeke, "you never told us who beat you up today!"

"That would be because he didn't **get** beaten up today, he beat **me** up."

"Oh." I shrugged in my head, ' _well that explains why he is visiting her.'_

"Aww, and I was so looking forward to teasing you about loosing." Ben pouted at the happily grinning Zeke over missing out on great teasing material, and I sympathised because I wanted to do exactly the same thing.

"Don't tease him," Sally interjected, "or I'll start teasing you about all of your losses to show you what it's like. Especially all the really embarrassing bits." Ben looked shamefaced under Sally's judging stare, although as someone who was very much like Ben I wasn't sure if it was actually sincere or not…

Zeke, on the other hand, just laughed at the pair of them. "Don't worry about it Sally, I would have done exactly the same thing in his position."

"I second that," I said raising my hand with a grin for emphasis. Ben turned around to face me, mirroring my expression, to high-five my raised hand. "Sorry Sally, you tried to do the right thing here." I shot her an apologetic look.

She just sighed and shook her head despondently at us. "Children. You are all children…" she muttered so only I could really hear her.

"You love us anyway, don't you?" I lightly punched her shoulder as I continued, "and don't you dare try and deny it. We are too adorable." We all shot her award winning innocent smiles at the end of my little speech.

Apparently we weren't even slightly fooling or amusing her because she stuck her tongue out at us before getting up and walking away.

"Hey, where are you going?" Zeke asked her retreating form.

"To ask how long these two jokesters have to stay here, seeing as she likes me, unlike **some people** ," she called over her shoulder without breaking stride.

" **Cough,** Zeke, **cough** ," I said quickly behind a closed fist. But then shouted my thanks at Sally because I really was grateful, which was echoed by . . . Shauna, was it? Yeah, Shauna.

As Sally entered Mrs Raiden's office (how do I remember her name so easily?!) the room fell into, what I would call a "slightly awkward" silence. I looked between everyone repeatedly, hoping someone, anyone, would speak about just about anything, but alas nothing changed. I smiled slightly as a thought passed through my head of something my little brother often did in situations such as these, and put one hand on top of the other – interlocking fingers – while moving my thumbs in small circles each side of my hands.

Zeke was the first to notice my action and so asked what exactly I was doing. "Awkward turtle," I responded without stopping as the other two followed his gaze to see my strange gesture.

"What the…" Ben scrunched his face up in a mixture of confusion and curiosity.

I laughed before releasing my hands to explain to them that the awkward turtle was a gesture used when there is an extended and slightly uncomfortable silence. When both you and nobody else can find something to start a conversation about you make the awkward turtle and more often than not the conversation picks up again.

"So how do you do it?" Zeke asked with a genuinely curious tone.

"OK. So, you put one hand out palm down and spread your fingers out wide. Then put your other hand on top facing the same way and link your fingers together to make a kind of fist, but leave your thumbs free. Now poke them out to the sides and rotate them in circular motions and there you have the awkward turtle," I explained while demonstrating the movements to them all as I went. "Fairly simple."

I was of course at that moment Sally decided to re-join us to exclaim, "what **are** you all doing?" She was clearly worried about our sanity as we simultaneously burst into fits of laughter at her perplexed expression looking at each of us repeatedly to try and understand our actions. "Seriously, are you feeling all right? Did you all hit your heads or something?"

"We're fine Sally, don't worry," I managed to somehow say between my laughter. Ben had doubled over he was laughing so hard and my face hurt from grinning so much. After a minute or so we managed to stop laughing and breathe normally again, or at least normally enough to speak once again. Ben of course had to ruin that though.

"Sally, you were looking at us like we had lost our minds!" He snickered once again, which soon led the rest of us to follow suit with our own bouts of chuckling that descended once again into wild hilarity as we kept catching each other's gaze every time we started to regain our composure. I was curled up in a ball due to my stomach hurting from laughing so hard – all my other injuries temporarily forgotten in the merriment – and Zeke was quite literally ROFLing at the foot of Shauna's bed. I couldn't see Ben or Shauna from my position, but I could definitely hear their laughter mixed in the noise.

It was a long time before all of us had completely stopped chortling, every time it died down one of us would obviously look at another, as you do, but they would start up again uncontrollably and the rest of us would follow suit. It was infectious, only Sally remained silent in her seat next to me – well other than the guy at the end of the room, he doesn't count though – but even she smiled slightly at the sight of us.

"Honestly, I think you might have," Sally informed us dryly once silence finally fell, only to follow up by sighing and reluctantly agreeing with my earlier comment. "Georgia was right though; I wouldn't have you any other way."

I snorted at that. "Okay, too much sappiness right there, tone it down a bit would ya."

"I'm only repeating what you said earlier," was her sly retort aimed at me with a raised eyebrow. Not that I blame her for it because it was true, I was being a bit hypocritical there but there is only so much sappiness I can take before it becomes too much. I'm a non-sappy kinda girl.

I opened my mouth to reply when the door that Sally had exited only moments earlier reopened forcefully and the form of our resident grouchy nurse appeared once again. With a frown creasing her features it was clear she was less than pleased with us. "What are you all still doing here? They need to rest if they want me to allow them to be released in time for Visiting Day." With that said she closed the door once again to leave us in silence.

"I guess that's our cue to leave you two alone then." I looked over to see Zeke hugging Shauna goodbye, "I'll come see you tomorrow, hope you feel better in time to see your family. You too Georgia," he finished looking over at me, flashing me a quick smile.

"Yeah we'll see you tomorrow, feel better," Ben walked over to my bedside to give me a quick hug. Once he was finished Sally stood up from her chair and did the same, reminding me to rest so I healed properly.

"Thanks for coming to visit guys, it means a lot. I'm really glad you are my friends," I told them with a sincere smile. Yeah, I can do sappy too sometimes, but I was honestly grateful for their friendship and I wanted them to know before I was whisked off somewhere else. I didn't know when that would be so I felt that it was a good time to tell them as they visited me on my sickbed.

"We're glad you're our friend too Georgia," Sally gave me a bright smile while Ben and Zeke merely nodded, each sporting smaller smiles of their own. Zeke decided to add in a little eye roll as well, but he was still smiling so I assumed it was a good natured gesture in answer to our sappiness – I do the same a lot so know the motion well. "Come on guys, lets go. Bye you two, sleep well."

With that the trio left us in peace with smiles and waves as the walked out. Shauna and I shared a smile briefly before bidding each other goodnight. She seemed to be really nice, I couldn't really remember her from the books and only recognised her name. It had been a while since I had read the books, and although I had seen the films more recently you tended not to notice much other than the main characters. That makes a lot of sense though if you think about it, after all they are trying to cram an entire book into ninety minutes of film and that's no easy feat – especially as film is limiting as to what can be conveyed to its audience.

As I went to settle down to nod off I realised something, my bed was still in an upright position that although allowed me to sit up easily, prevented me from being able to lie down comfortably enough to sleep. I let out a frustrated sigh as I threw my covers off and clambered out of bed, now I had to figure out how the heck to get the bed flat again. I ducked down where Sally had been fiddling with my bed and found a control panel attached to my bed, I scanned the buttons to find one that looked like it would raise my bed. I pressed a couple of buttons before finding the one I wanted and hopped back into bed once it was flat. Snuggling down I pulled the covers tightly over me and settled down for a good nights sleep, hoping I would be out of here the next day.

Georgia: So yeah... I did warn you it would be not very action packed this week. I just needed to get something posted for you guys to read, so while I intended for this to only be half a chapter it ended up being the entire thing... I promise you that things start happening soon, so don't you worry. Until next time, cheerio!


	13. Visiting Day

**[AN: I'm back! And I really have no excuse for not updating for sooo long, many apologies that I hope you accept. I've given you a long chapter and en extra one to make up for it! Also I changed Stranger Danger (ch.2 of The Kidnapping of a Time-line) because there were some aspects I forgot to add that are needed for the story, so please go back and reread the chapter when you have time. :) Thank you for being patient with me!]**

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Georgia: Hey again my lovely readers! Sorry for ditching you for so long, in my defence my laptop decided to die and getting a new one was majorly, frustratingly difficult. Anyway, due to my absence I'm going to keep this short and sweet so you can get to reading the real meaty stuff. Thanks to my new favourites and follower, kellymnolan and nataliejaynesidney, it means a lot!

* * *

 **Visiting Day**

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Getting me out of bed the next day was immensely difficult. I had no reason to be up, my bed was nice and cosy, I was having a great dream, and who doesn't love sleep? Actually let me rephrase, what teenager doesn't love sleep? Because let's be real here, trying to get kids to go to bed is an absolute nightmare. I used to be the same, but that changed with time and sleep became something that was difficult to get me out of. As a result, with no alarm, by the time I eventually inched my way into consciousness it was almost midday – oops...

I stretched out every inch of my body, getting into all kinds of peculiar positions to achieve complete satisfaction, but it was totally worth it as I sighed in contentment and relaxed. I propped myself up onto my elbows to look around to see what was what in the hospital wing, but found it deserted except for me. Well that's what I get for sleeping in I guess.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and was about to hop off when I noticed a letter folded up on my bedside table. Curious, I opened it up to find a neatly written letter from Ben and Sally telling me that they had stopped by earlier to wake me up for visiting day, but had been told that I wasn't to be disturbed and they should leave as I needed to rest. I rolled my eyes at that because I didn't really **need** to sleep in as I felt completely fine, I just wanted to.

I folded the letter back up and placed it on the bedside table then jumped out of bed, wandered over to the bathroom, and began freshening myself up for Visiting Day so I looked all nice and stuff. Because, although I was alone in this dimension, my friends had written that they wanted me to meet their families and I was happy to oblige.

Unfortunately, during my shower musings I realised there were a few things that needed to be done before I could meet up with them, the most pressing matter being that I had to make sure I was actually allowed to leave the med wing – which meant I would need to talk to Mrs Raiden . . . fun.

I finished cleaning my teeth and looked at myself in the mirror, I desperately needed a change of clothes as mine were crumpled to hell, not to mention the spatters of blood dotted over the black fabric. My face was a similar miserable story with purpling bruises centring on my nose along with a delightful black eye – super. I tilted my head to the right to get a better look at it, it didn't look as bad as my last one so hopefully it would heal faster. I sighed and pulled my wet hair into a high ponytail, my face was really taking a beating in this dimension, but at least this fight led to most of my injuries being elsewhere. I quickly pulled my top up and gasped as I saw the damage Steve inflicted, my torso was littered with bruises – some looking particularly nasty – how did I not feel this?! It looked really painful.

"Oh Georgia, you muppet," I muttered to myself as I resisted face palming – not wanting to cause even more damage. Of course, I'd had painkillers pumped into me for the last however many hours that numbed any pain from the bruises. _'Oh but that really won't be fun when they wear off…'_ I sighed again in annoyance, I hated being in pain, and pulled my top down to go and find my ticket out of here.

Ten minutes of arguing later and I was heading out to get myself some fresh clothes, because **man** were the ones I was in smelling ripe. I quickly but carefully (to ensure I didn't injure myself further) made my way up to the dorm, looking down to see The Pit absolutely packed in a rainbow of colours as Dauntless transfers of all ages met up with their families for the day. Even from my position halfway up the side of the open space I could hear the chatter of conversation and saw kids running around excitedly, happiness radiated from everyone below me. I smiled melancholically at the sight, wishing I had the same opportunity as my friends but happy for them none the less. I knew how much it sucked to be away from your family and was glad that they at least had a chance to see theirs, no matter how brief.

I quickly stripped off my gross clothes and changed into something fresher, picking out a pair of black jeans and a red polo in an attempt to look smart-ish for the special day, even if I was merely lacing up my usual boots to finish my outfit. There wasn't much I could do about my general appearance with no make up to call my own, so didn't even try to fix it and instead hurried out of the dorm to find my friends.

Carefully weaving my way through the crowd of multi-coloured clothes, I kept a sharp eye out for Sally's eye catching hair against her black clothes, seeing as I was far more likely to spot her than Ben. After all, as handsome as Ben was, his features didn't exactly stand out in a crowd of people as dense as the one on the bottom of The Pit was during Visiting Day.

Of course I found them standing on the far side of the room compared to where I entered, typical. I called out to them in greeting as I approached and they turned around to give me matching grins that I returned equally enthusiastically - I was genuinely excited about meeting their families. Sally was the first to introduce her visitors, tugging me gently over to a group of people.

"Georgia, meet my mom Daisy and my little sister Faith," she said indicating fist to a kind looking woman with soft features and Sally's matching fiery hair. She didn't really look like a Daisy in my opinion, but not my place to judge. Faith, on the other hand, was a very petite looking nine-year-old with very light brown hair and, what seemed to be, the family's warm brown eyes and light sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both," I cheerfully greeted them as I shook their hands respectively. Faith seemed a little nervous about meeting me so I gave her a reassuring smile as I grasped her hand in mine, it seemed to help as she stood a little straighter and gave a soft smile of her own. Feeling pleased I had alleviated some of her fear I stood tall again to say, "I'm one of Sally's friends here and I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that Sally is doing great." And there went my pleased feeling as I scolded myself, ' _congrats Georgia, you sounded like a robot there. Why did you feel the need to tell her how Sally is doing in initiation – like_ _ **you**_ _know?!'_

"I'm glad Sally has made such a good friend here, she has told us all about you and Ben. I hope you are feeling better after being in the medical wing for the night." A look of genuine concern passed over her face as she inquired after my health and I was humbled that she cared when she didn't know me from Eve. But then again she was Amity so her concern made sense…

"I'm doing well, thank you," I answered with a shy smile. But as I was about to ask after her health, as is polite, I was interrupted.

"Is it true you saved Sally's life?" I followed the sound of the voice and looked down to see a pair of wide, awe-inspired eyes gazing up at me. "Did you really pull her out of a collapsed building?"

I was thrown off by her blunt, unexpected questions as I hadn't anticipated being asked anything of the sort, so it took me a moment to collect myself and remove the look of mild surprise off my face. "Well, I wouldn't say that I saved her life, we just got lucky and I didn't pull Sally out, if anything she pulled me out of the building because I fainted," was my response to the young girl as I was the first of the group to recover.

"Faith!" Sally hissed down to her younger sibling, "don't ask questions like that!" She looked at me apologetically and murmured, "sorry about that, I told them about what's been happening since I began and it seems Faith got a little carried away." Meanwhile Daisy was crouched down to Faith's height and was whispering to her younger daughter, who looked unsure what she had done wrong. Not wanting to upset the youngster I quickly began to think of something to say that would ease the situation.

"Hey, don't worry about it, it's a fair question. I was just surprised by it that's all." I joined Daisy in crouching down to the nine-year old's short height and declared gently, "you know, your older sister was **super** brave that night. I wouldn't have made it out if she hadn't been so calm, even with everything that had happened. You should be so proud of her." I smiled brightly at her until my expression was returned and only then stood back up. I had no idea if what I had said was the right thing to do in the situation, but it seemed to have helped and that was good enough for me.

At this point Ben stepped in and said he wanted to introduce me to his family, so I politely said goodbye to the trio and joined Ben in the short walk over to his folk. It was clear that the two families had already been introduced by my friends as the they were clumped together quite closely compared to the other groups surrounding them. While Sally's family were wearing the bright colours of Amity, Ben's donned the classic blue of Erudite. It seemed that while some of Sally's family had been unable to attend the same was not the case for Ben's as I was taken over to both his parents and an elder sister that looked to be about my age. Unlike Sally he didn't talk about his family very much at all so I didn't know anything about them as I had with my previous introductions.

"Georgia I presume," the tall man said as he stepped forward and held out his hand for me to shake. I hesitantly accepted the gesture as he continued on like a freight train, "it is a pleasure to meet you, Benjamin has told us about you – you are his friend, yes?"

For some reason I felt the need to be ridiculously polite around the stern looking man I assumed to be his Dad, so as he released my hand I replied, "yes sir, I am one of Ben's friends here."

"Good. I am Benjamin's father, Sebastian, this is my wife, Arabella and our daughter Sophia." He indicated to the pair next to him, a stern looking blonde woman with piercing blue eyes – the opposite to her husband's deep brown eyes and hair. Their daughter on the other hand had very similar features to her brother, they both had their father's deep brown eyes and hair colour somewhere between the parents. However, while Ben seemed not to have inherited their sharp features, their daughter certainly had and I felt like I was in the presence of three strict teachers for some reason. It made me grateful that Ben didn't inherit too much of his parent's facial features, or I wasn't so sure that I would be friends with him – it wasn't that I was judgemental or anything, it was that . . . well . . . it was slightly scary if I was honest… Don't judge! These were quite frightening looking people.

"It is a pleasure to meet you all," I greeted amicably to the trio. As nervous as I was around them, I could still behave politely as I didn't want to offend them - I got the feeling that if I didn't things would end poorly between us.

"How has Benjamin been performing here?" Arabella inquired seriously, looking directly at me as she asked. "I assume he has been behaving suitably, but how has his initiation been faring?"

"Erm, well, I'm not sure I am the right person to ask about that, ma'am. Perhaps you should discuss this with his instructor, Four?"

"No. I wanted to hear how he is faring from his friend, one who I have been told is doing well herself." I blushed slightly at hearing that, as I was under the impression I was doing merely average in terms of my initiation ranking – after all I had lost quite spectacularly only yesterday. I rarely achieved anything above average in terms of tests and classes after all…

"Well, I would say that Ben has been doing well, I would say the three of us have been doing about the same as each other. Although we won't know for certain until tonight." A look of confusion passed over their faces, so I clarified by saying, "Four is giving us our definitive rankings later today."

"He is?" Ben's head snapped to face me with an inquisitive look, didn't he know? I thought they told us we would be shown our ranks today? Did I get the day wrong? Well damn, now I'm second guessing myself…

"Uh, yeah, weren't you told that?" I shuffled my feet nervously, hoping that my gut instinct about this was correct and I wouldn't look a total fool.

"No. Oh, Four must have told you when you were talking at breakfast yesterday. Useful to be on the inside, eh?" He elbowed me a couple of times with a cheeky grin, I rolled my eyes as I laughed, but agreed with him regardless.

"Anyway, I will leave you all to your reunion. It was a pleasure to meet you all and I hope you have a good day. Goodbye."

"See you later, usual seats at dinner?" I nodded in agreement before smiling at them all and wandering off to find something to do for the rest of the day. Ugh, a whole day free with diddly-squat to do…

I zigzagged my way through many joyfully reuniting families, all a mixture of black and multi-coloured clothing, some families even had at least one member from every faction. It was clear that many of these families had not seen each other for some time, and the sight of their reunions was painful for me to watch. I felt my chest tighten slightly more with every greeting I witnessed and by the time I had exited the crowd I was fighting back tears with a lump in my throat. The whole scene was making me incredibly melancholic and I found myself desperately wishing they were here to visit me. Logically I knew it was impossible, but I couldn't help turning around to scan the crowd for any of the four familiar faces I knew oh so well.

Of course I saw none of those faces and, despite knowing it would be the case, I found myself crushed with disappointment and heartache. I rapidly blinked back the tears as I stood alone at the edge of all the happy people milling around in front of me, and realised I hadn't felt this isolated since this crazy, fucked-up journey started. _'God dammit, get a grip Georgia! Pull yourself together!'_ I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply a few times in an attempt to calm myself down, that after a few moments worked and I regained my composure.

Opening my eyes, I quickly turned on my heels and marched up the path running up The Pit – desperately needing to get out of there, because even though I had regained my composure, it was only temporary and sensed I was ready to crack at any moment. Retreating to my room, I dropped to my knees on my bed then fell face first into my pillow and groaned from the emotional turmoil running through me. This sucked.

 **Four's POV**

It was early in the afternoon and I was supervising the initiates during Visiting Day. I had volunteered to keep an eye on them as I knew there would be nobody coming to see me, nor did I want any of them to. So none of the happy families in front of me bothered me, because that was something I'd never had – hence my willingness to be the one to keep an eye on the initiates. I ran my eyes over the crowd below from my position leaning against the railing on the edge of The Pit, wanting to make sure all the teenagers were accounted for and none had wandered off. Seeing all present and accounted for, I relaxed and decided to attempt to enjoy my semi day off so wandered down the slope to the base of The Pit with the idea of finding something to eat.

Once I wound my way back to my vantage point I had gathered up a bottle of water and a chicken salad sandwich, not the most appetising but nice enough. I shoved the water into my back pocket and retook my old position to settle in for a long afternoon of watching people. As boring as that sounds to some, I found it to be immensely interesting and a good way to chase away boredom. People watching. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but if whoever is reading this has never people watched, you should try it. It's not difficult, you just observe those around and try to see what you can learn about them from their appearance, actions, speech and relationships, or I know of those that merely scrutinise their outfits – it varies for each individual.

It took me an embarrassingly long time before I realised that I was missing an initiate, I honestly don't know how I hadn't realised sooner, as when I asked the others if they had seen her they told me they last spoke to her over an hour ago. An hour! And of course it was Georgia that had to have vanished off… I swear, she had to have been the most troublesome initiate there ever was. Nobody knew where she had gone off to - although that was to be expected as they were all having a great time with their families - so it was up to me to figure out where she was.

' _Right,'_ I thought to myself as I exited the crowd, " _lets start in the most obvious places. She'll most likely be in the cafeteria, dorm or the training rooms. Cafeteria is the closest so I'll start there.'_ Having deduced my first area to search I headed off on my hunt, frustrated to my core – why did she have to choose **today** to go off without telling someone where she was. Did she have no sense? It was Visiting Day, which meant the initiates were under heavy scrutiny from the faction leaders regarding where their allegiances were – you can't be seen to be too friendly with your family in the other factions. " _Faction before blood_ " was a phrase to be taken very seriously here. So not the day to be disappearing if you are an initiate. The worst part was that I had warned her about this.

' _At least I was supposed to have warned her…_ ' I mused as I walked along, _'I did tell her, didn't I? Great, now I'm second guessing myself.'_ Regardless, **someone** will have told her about the scrutiny she would be under, Eric was unlikely to have passed up on the opportunity to inform them and induce some more fear in them. I was growing tired of his attitude, and it was only getting worse…

I shook myself out of my thoughts as I entered the canteen, now was not the time to be dwelling on Eric – I had to find my missing charge before she got herself into trouble, something that seemed to follower her like a shadow. I quickly searched the hall for any signs of her and found none. I sighed and made an as swift exit as entrance with my next destination being the training rooms on the next floor up. Admittedly the dorm was where I was most likely to find her, but it was the highest up and therefore logically best to be my last location to search.

My fruitless searching of the training rooms proved my theory correct, so I ascended once again and headed for the dorm room with hopes that she would be be there, because if she wasn't I may be searching for some time. The door was unusually closed when I finally arrived, I assumed that someone was inside and needed privacy, so knocked a few times and stood waiting for an answer. Hearing nothing in response, not even a shuffle of someone moving, I knocked again louder and called into the room, "hello? Anybody in there? Georgia?"

Once again I didn't get a response so I shrugged to myself and walked in, announcing that I was doing so as I opened the door – just in case. However, it turned out that it wasn't exactly necessary as, although the room wasn't empty, the only occupant was on their bed and clearly hadn't heard me calling or knocking. I let out a tense breath I hadn't been aware was building as I wandered down the rows of bunk beds, now I had found my missing student I could relax once again. When I arrived at the mattress on the floor I allowed a small smile to break through at the amusing sight of Georgia haphazardly sprawled out on her bed, foot bobbing to some unknown rhythm. I crouched down and gently tapped her on the shoulder, only to throw myself backwards to avoid being hit in the face by the back of her head as she immediately sprung up in surprise.

"Oh, its just you," the startled initiate said as she lowered her arms from the tense fighting stance she had flown into. Her entire disposition relaxed when she reached down to lend me a hand up, which I gratefully took after being surprised by the rush of unexpected activity that landed me on the floor. "Sorry about that, I didn't notice you come in. You okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine thank you," I replied, nodding absentmindedly while I re-gathered my bearings now I was on me feet once again. "How did you not hear me come in? I knocked multiple times, and called out as I did."

"I dunno," she said shrugging uncaringly before yawning loudly, "I was kinda in a world of my own and almost asleep to be honest. It's been a bit of a boring day." With that she flopped down onto her mattress and crossed her legs, "what was it you wanted again?" I raised an eyebrow as I told her I hadn't said anything about why I was here, to which she responded with a roll of her eyes and a huff. "Oh, just tell me what you want Four."

"I don't **want** anything, just needed to know where you'd snuck off to. I'm in charge of keeping an eye on you all today so I have to keep tabs on your whereabouts. I couldn't find you anywhere." I shrugged and paused for a moment to think of the best way to get my point across, "you know what today is, right? So you know the leaders will be keeping a close eye on you all throughout the day…" I trailed off as her face morphed into an expression that clearly told me she thought I was pointing out the blindingly obvious, I sighed and continued anyway. "So you can't vanish off and not tell anyone where you will be, it's going to look suspicious to them."

I barely finished my sentence before she flung herself onto her back whilst voicing an agitated, and I would say greatly exaggerated, groan until she hit the surface. "I don't care what they think. I probably won't be around long enough to be a problem for them anyway!"

"I've told you once and I'll tell you again, you will rank high enough to be a member of Dauntless so stop saying things like that." I sighed deeply, this initiate was infuriating. My words seemed to fall on deaf ears though as she steamrolled on as if I hadn't said a word.

"Tell them I'm by myself in the dorm to get them off my back. Jeez…" she mumbled from under the arm resting over her eyes. "I'm not going back down there. No way, no how," her arm was briefly removed so she could glare at me and tell me with finality, "and don't even **try** asking me why."

"I'll see you later then…" I decided hesitantly after thinking carefully about my options at the time, which were very limited. I knew where she was - as long as that didn't change - and that she was alone, so if they asked about what she was doing I could just point them in the right direction. "Just don't wander off," I called back as I closed the door behind me before mentally groaning at how exhausting one person could be, hopefully next years' group wouldn't have any troublemakers in it or so help me I may change my job.

 **Georgia's POV**

I had lost track of how long I had been lazing around on my bed, unable to face all the pain that I would have to endure if I opened my eyes and saw all my peers having a ball. However, I knew I had been there for quite a long time because the empty space around me was gradually filling with the low hum of voices, a hum that was steadily growing in volume.

People. Super.

I knew I was being a bit of a drama queen but at the same time I couldn't give less of a shit really. I didn't want to leave my safe little sanctuary of solitude. Well that and I didn't want to spoil their great moods with my miserable one, their days shouldn't be marred by me and my moodiness. So I stayed exactly where I was and turned up my music to just above the noise of them talking, if someone wanted me enough they would come and tap me on the shoulder or something.

It wasn't long before my prediction came true and I was being hailed to dinner by the usual suspects. So I managed to drag myself off my comfy quilt at their insistence that I need to eat something. Of course it didn't matter that I wasn't hungry and didn't feel like eating anything because Sally insisted, and when Sally insists its easiest to just agree.

So it wasn't long before I found myself sitting at a table with a plate of food in front of me while Sally and Ben chatted away about their days across from me. I, on the other hand, had my head propped up on my hand with my gaze fixed down at my half-hearted pushing of my chicken casserole around the plate. Not only was I being forced to eat, there was absolutely no food that I liked available that night – its not that I'm a picky eater or anything, there are just some foods I don't like and I'm not a fan of casseroles.

"You just going to push that around your plate all evening?" I broke out of my zoned out state to register what Ben has asked me, but apparently I didn't do it fast enough when he continued on. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah I'm good thanks," I plastered on a fake smile to attempt to placate them but I guess it didn't work when they gave me identical sceptical looks. "What?" I asked tensely, "I'm fine, seriously." Sally opened her mouth as thought she was going to speak but Ben shifted in his seat and she suddenly changed her mind so I had the strong impression Ben had just kicked her in the leg or something to shut her up.

"Okay then, just wanted to check cause you've been a bit out of it and we haven't seen you since we introduced you to our families." Ben gave me a concerned look and as much as I was touched that they worried about me, they really needed to stop. Today had been a stark reminder that I didn't belong here, that I was only here temporarily and I should really start to distance myself from those I currently called friends. Because it was only going to hurt more if I didn't.

"Thanks guys, but really I'm fine," I gathered up my tray of barely touched food as I stood, "I'm just tired from all the stuff we've been doing so I'm going to get some rest."

"Oh okay then. See you later?" Sally asked tentatively but with a hopeful expression, a hopeful expression I couldn't crush so I told her I would. I felt bad for lying to her, but I figured it was best for everyone in the long run.

I was ambling along back to the dorm when I bumped, almost literally, into Zeke and very nearly started to give him a piece of my mind regarding watching where he was walking. Thankfully I restrained mouth before I started yelling because I doubt he would have offered for me to join him if I hadn't managed as much.

"Hey Georgia, why aren't you at dinner with everyone else?" I found this a bit ironic coming from him, seeing as he was doing exactly the same by talking to me in the hallway. He looked confused when I told him I wasn't hungry, unsurprising given my usual appetite, and told me he had already eaten when I repeated his question. "Actually…" he gave me a very thoughtful look before apparently coming to a decision, "are you busy this evening?"

"Er . . . no," I said hesitantly as I scrunched my face in confusion. We were friendly, but he had never asked me to hang out with him before, and certainly never just the two of us.

He grinned wildly at my response, so much so it had me slightly suspicious if I was being honest. "Great! I've got a surprise for you! Meet me at the tracks in fifteen, okay?" Without waiting for an answer he went tearing off past me down the hall, leaving me with many unanswered questions

I smiled at his enthusiasm for whatever this was, his excitement was contagious. I was still smiling when I arrived at the dorm but it faded when I began chewing on the inside of my cheek as I contemplated what to do with the few minutes I had before I had to head off. I wasn't sure how long I would be gone for, so decided I should probably change my womenly defences – just to be on the safe side.

I grabbed my bag that I'd left at the foot of my "bed" and fished out my little box of saviours. I was about to throw my rucksack onto my mattress when I realised how dumb I was being – I should be ready to move at any second all of the time. And at that moment I certainly wasn't. My clothes were piled up on one side of the bed and some of the contents of my bag had joined their freedom on the other side. I almost face-palmed at myself but instead managed to tone it down to a deep sigh and closed my eyes to chastise myself. Ugh and I had been doing so well recently.

With little time to spare I threw all my stuff back into the bag willy-nilly which meant it didn't all fit back in properly but oh well, it was in and that's what mattered. With my things kinda in the bag I scanned the room quickly and, seeing the coast was clear, opened my personal little dimension and chucked my bag through the hole. I'd deal with the consequences of that later I decided.

"Am I late?" I asked breathlessly, skidding to a halt in front of Zeke. I had moved as fast as I could after dealing with my mess, but I wasn't sure I would make it in time as I hadn't stopped to check a clock because I was in such a rush.

"You're fine," he answered with a smirk, amusement plastered all over his face. "Actually you are a few minutes early, so stop worrying, nobody else is here yet. What were you doing that meant you didn't check the time? It can't have been that important – you said you weren't busy."

"Oh," I replied quietly after being flawed for a moment, he was right as I probably should have checked the time rather than just assume I was late. "Okay then," I relaxed my previously tense posture as I gazed around and saw he was right again, we were the only ones in the entire area, "in my defence I didn't know anyone was joining us." I shot him a pointed look, just to get my point across properly. Unfortunately, his response was to just give me an uninterested shrug and look around, presumably for whoever else was joining us.

For the next few minutes there were teenagers continually trickling into the area until there were a good number of us gathered next to the tracks. After a quick glance around I realised that everyone gathered were both Dauntless born and looked to be around seventeen. It was at that moment that it clicked in my head what was going on here, and I felt a rush of excitement and adrenaline flow through my body in anticipation.

"What are you grinning about?"

"Just excited about this surprise you have lined up for me," I bullshitted him quickly as I widened my grin when I realised my emotions had manifested themselves onto my facial expressions - oops. "It better be good if you are dragging me away from my cosy bed by the way," I challenged him with a smirk.

"Oh it will be," he assured me, although that confidence gradually melted away until he was avoiding my gaze and shuffling his feet slightly. "But . . . um . . . well . . . I don't **exactly** know what we are doing…"

"Oh really?" I asked as my smirk grew into an amused one. "So let me get this straight, you pulled me away from my comfy bed to take me on what you **assured** me will be a really cool adventure, but you don't **actually** know what we're gunna be doing?" I crossed my arms and shifted my weight to one leg to ask sassily, "did I get that right?"

He drew his gaze up to meet my eyes and glare at me, but he soon relented and sighed deeply. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up," he muttered dropping his gaze to the floor once again. I chuckled good naturedly and asked what he did know, which perked him up as he told me that we were going on an initiation ritual and how usually its only Dauntless born who are allowed to come. I raised my eyebrows at that but he shrugged it off confidently, "just act like you belong and you'll be fine."

I snorted and sceptically replied with, "if you say so…" However, as I was about to comment further I heard the distant rumbling of an approaching train and someone yelled that this was our ride for the evening. "I'm totally blaming you if I get told off in any way you know," I informed him casually as we walked closer to the tracks and got ready to board the passing train.

It was Zeke's turn to snort as he replied, "yeah, I figured as much."

Our conversation was ended by the train rounding the corner at its usual high speed so we ran to try and match it before leaping aboard. Zeke and I ended up in the same carriage – not always a guarantee – so I shoved him along to make room for me to sit beside him. It had only taken me a second to scan the other occupants to realise I knew precisely one person there, so had moved quickly to sit next to him – not feeling comfortable sitting next to dangerous strangers. Dangerous because half of them had completed their training and I had not.

We made small talk as we rumbled down the tracks until someone I didn't know stood up and told us this was where we got off, and with that she leapt out of the train. Zeke and I exchanged a quick glance before getting up and following her example with equal speed. I landed heavily and felt a wave of pain roll up my legs causing me to groan aloud quietly. I paused for a moment until the pain had dissipated and I could run again, then moved off with the rest of the group.

There was still a fair amount of light as we got nearer to the Hancock Tower and I felt a wave of sadness flow through me at the sight of the building. The once sleek black mirrored skyscraper was gone, replaced with the ruin of a once impressive structure – much like the rest of the city in that respect. Most of the windows that covered the building had shattered, leaving gaping holes scattered everywhere, and the ones that were still in tact were dull from coated in a thick layer of dirt and grime. The Magnificent Mile below it was a ghost town, a stark difference to how I'd last seen it when you could barely move from all the people wandering around.

I gazed into all of the shops as we passed them, remembering how my Mum had dragged the family around for **hours** when we first visited. Smiling, I recalled how she insisted we all needed down coats from Eddie Bower, when in reality we needed shorts because we were dying from the heat – even if it was September. I outright laughed when we passed the Apple store, the sight was too ironic not to as the once modern and packed store had clearly been the fastest to fall into disrepair. It was an empty room of dust and dirt now.

"What's so funny?" Zeke asked with an incredibly confused tone, "there's nothing funny going on…" I laughed through my nose as I shook my head and waved off his concern, going back to peering into all the shops not unlike I would have if they were functioning as normal. The rest were as I expected, although none stood out in the same way, and we soon reached the base of the tower. "Are we climbing all the way up?"

"Don't be stupid," one of the elder teens scoffed, "we're using the elevators – and yes they still work before you ask."

"Ouch," I smirked at Zeke, "shot down a bit there dumbass." He glared at me but wisely said nothing else and we were soon accelerating up to the top floor – ears popping as we ascended. I swallowed deeply multiple times to get rid of the annoying sensation. "Ugh, I hate it when my ears pop," I moaned quietly.

The guy who'd chewed out Zeke a minute ago regarded me with surprise. "Have you been up here before or something?" he asked curiously, causing me to panic for a brief moment. They didn't have planes here to cause popping ears . . . or wait, did they? I didn't know!

' _Think Georgia, think!'_ "Umm…" I said stalling for time. Then I had a light bulb moment – swimming! "No, but I dive too deep a lot when I swim and the same thing happens, so I get it a lot." I shrugged, hopefully nonchalantly, and he seemed to buy it when the lift doors opened which saved me from further interrogation.

We all exited the lift quickly and while the younger ones paused in confusion, the rest of us spotted the ladder leading into the ceiling and made our way over to it. I heard everyone that had paused scramble to catch up with us when they saw what was going on and where they should be going.

As my head popped above the hole in the floor it was immediately battered by the vicious wind. I frowned strongly as many strands of loose hair that had escaped my ponytail were whipped around and clung to my face. I huffed in frustration as I climbed up and couldn't do anything about my obscured view until I was on the roof – where I speedily faced the wind and retied my hair, ensuring the strands were secured this time.

By the time I was done everyone had made their way up onto the roof, and those that weren't expecting it were gaping at the thick chord for the zip wire going down from the top of the tower. While I joined them with some fake gaping to avoid suspicion, my eyes were in fact open wide with excitement rather than fear or surprise – I LOVED zip lines with a burning passion. Although, I was slightly more dubious about the safety of the harness with this one, I was still relatively unconcerned though as I was sure it would be fine given what was written in the books.

So of course when they asked who wanted to go first – after they sent the elders down first – I was the first to volunteer, enthusiastically jumping onto the raised platform. If the guy that was supervising was surprised at my eagerness, he was very good at hiding it – maybe he was the same when he first tried. I listened intently as he explained how to put on their slightly different harnesses, but performed my own safety checks on it which did visibly surprise him. Well, that and because I altered my harness to mirror the ones I was more used to, making it so I could sit upright in it.

"I've got this," I told him as I grinned broadly whilst tightening the straps around my body. My altered sling allowed me to stand up as he sceptically hooked me up to the wire.

"Are you sure you want to go down like that?" he asked cautiously, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. Not that I cared really, this was the most fun I'd had for a while and maybe this would teach them something anyway. So I nodded happily, a huge grin still on my face as I took a couple of steps back.

I looked behind me and smirked at the excited initiates lined up for their turn. "Watch and learn NOOBS!" I exclaimed before running and jumping into the air, diving slightly to perform a forward somersault as I usually do. This earned me some barely heard gasps of surprise and concern from the roof behind me. I, on the other hand, whooped with glee as I "landed" my front flip, followed by distant cheers as I raced down the wire, wind howling past me ears as I sped along.

I leaned back with my arms spread wide as I sailed through the air screaming happily, but quickly retracted them when a tall building loomed a little too close for comfort to my path. Despite my concerns I flew past with room to spare and continued enjoying my exhilarating decent to the earth. A decent that I noticed was progressively lessening as I spotted a group of tiny figures in the distance.

So I made the most of what I had left of what was probably the longest and highest zip line ever created, not to mention that it was likely the most dangerous too. I closed my eyes and basked in the feeling of weightlessness and felt like I was flying. In that moment I felt unstoppable, like I was Queen of the World, in short it felt amazing.

But like all things, it had to come to an end and I felt myself gradually slow down so I opened my eyes once again, sighing happily as I did. That had to have been the best zip lining experience ever, probably in any dimension, and I conveyed as much to the group I was approaching by yelling "that was amazing!" to them. My call was responded with cheering from them all, although I'm not sure they heard what I said exactly.

Of course, it was just my luck that as soon as I thought about dimensions I received a kind of mental "ping" – like the standard sound when you get an email on an iPhone. I received a semi-transparent red message across my vision telling me that a portal had opened in my area for me – nice to have a heads up this time rather than just springing it on me. The lack of a siren-like alarm going off in my head had already told me that it was supposed to be there this time – so I'd kinda guessed it was my ticket out of here before it even told me.

By the time I had finished reading the message and it had cleared from my vision I could just about see the swirling grey portal. A portal that was hovering in mid-air . . . at the mid point between me and the ground.

Great.

In that second I knew three things. One, this was **not** going to be easy, at all. Two, I was going to need a lot of luck to pull this off. And three, this was going to **hurt**.

Timing was everything in this and I was still travelling at a fair speed by this point, so when I was still a few hundred feet from the portal I mustered up some courage – by yelling loudly like some madwoman – and began the precarious plan. I threw my hands out to the sides and used my bending to simultaneously unhook all the metal clasps from the harness to release me. Immediately I began falling through the sky, still yelling loudly but now with fear fuelling the scream. There hadn't been enough time to manoeuvre any rocks from the ground, I wasn't even sure it was close enough to do so, and I couldn't use the cable in case someone was already on their way down behind me.

So I kept my gaze focused on the top of the portal and did my best to aim for it, guessing that if I went wrong it would be that I was too low rather than high as I'd fallen faster than anticipated. It was incredibly tempting to close my eyes and hope for the best but I knew it was like catching a ball, if you don't keep your eyes on it you would probably miss. Sadly, I didn't manage to do it, as I was within metres away I screwed my eyes shut - and found that I wasn't yelling as loud as I could when my yelling grew to an impossible volume. If this didn't work, I was dead. I knew that. I couldn't bare to see my incoming death.

I hit the ground hard but it was much sooner than I expected. I didn't think to hold my arms out in front of me. But then they probably would have been broken if I had. My head was the first thing to hit the earth and I blacked out instantly upon impact.

* * *

Georgia: *winces* yeah that wasn't my greatest landing ever... Still, it was all quite dramatic that night, and let me tell you that zip line was **hella** fun! I still need to find whoever decided then and there was a good idea to have my portal outa there, I need to beat some sense into them cause I mean JEEZ! Could they have made it any harder!? Anyways, next chapter coming right up! I sent them to Justagenericusername at the same time so she should post them close together.


	14. Where did she go?

Georgia: Bet you thought we were moving to a different dimension after that! Psych! Nah your stuck in Divergent still for now, I managed to contact Four and get his input in some of this, hence his POV's popping in every now and then, and he managed to write pretty much his own chapter for this, so I thought I'd post all of it!

* * *

 **Where did she go?**

* * *

 **Four's POV**

Walking around the halls alone late at night has a few advantages, one being that I have some time alone to think and relax, the other that night was that I was the first person to see the group of initiates come back from the yearly ritual. However, I was very surprised by the group I ran into. Rather than the expected pack of very excited and hyperactive teenagers shouting at the top of their lungs and running around, I was met with a sea of crestfallen faces trudging along and a heavy, almost suffocating, silence that surrounded them. It looked like someone had died while they were out.

I had been asked to go with them earlier, but had politely declined as usual, saying I didn't feel like going and that I had some things I needed to do. A bit of a vague reason to avoid going and I had expected to be challenged about it, luckily they weren't bothered enough to ask any further questions so left me alone. They probably thought I found it boring, I certainly hoped that's why they believed I didn't want to join them and didn't realise the real reason I didn't want to go. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, I'd ignored my fear of heights before to join them my first year, but I avoided going whenever I could.

The group shuffled past me slowly, none looking up from the ground, until I caught sight of Zeke towards the back and decided to ask him what was going on with them all. Their expressions and overall demeanour just weren't right at all, causing me to become too curious not to ask someone what on earth had happened.

"Zeke, what's going on? What happened?" I asked him curiously as I reached out and caught his arm to bring him to a halt. The initiate dragged his gaze up from the floor to look at me and I found myself looking into a pair of eyes brimming with pain and the knowledge he had to be the one to tell me some terrible news. My breath caught in my throat as my stomach twisted harshly at his expression, I knew that whatever he had to tell me this was going to be bad… "Zeke, what happened?" I demanded firmly, my grip unconsciously tightening around his forearm with apprehension.

Everyone else had paused a few feet ahead and were looking back at the pair of us, uncertain about continuing on without him. Zeke broke my eye contact for a moment to look at them with contemplating air before sighing deeply as he made a decision. "Go on, I'll tell him. See you later." Some of the others were apparently unsure about leaving him to tell me alone and so hesitantly hung around for a few moments after most had walked off. They didn't move until Zeke waved them off assuredly, shrugging my grip off at the same time. Neither of us said a word as we watched the fading figures walk down the hall, when the last had finally disappeared from our view Zeke let out another heavy sigh and turned back to me.

"Why are you all behaving as though you have to tell me that someone died while you were out? I know its high up but . . . we all know its . . . totally . . . safe…" I found my words dying on my lips as I spoke. "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked tightly. As I had continued my sentence the younger man's face had slowly grown more sombre and pained, even giving a slight flinch as I had said "died" – but that was impossible, nobody had **ever** been injured during the ritual, let alone **died**.

Once again he avoided my gaze and I was becoming more and more concerned each time he did so, he should know I could take bad news . . . so why was this bothering him so much to say? He slowly ran his hand down his face. "Four… I – I don't know how to tell you this . . . but someone did die. At least . . . we think they did… We aren't sure to be honest. But we couldn't find them, not even a body…" I could feel the shocked expression slowly take over my face as he carefully told me what had happened, my jaw hanging slightly slack at hearing their inability to locate a body. I cleared my throat slightly to ask him what exactly had happened when he interrupted me. "Wait, there – there's more…"

"What is it?" I asked anxiously, what could have been worse news than someone dying while they were out? I crossed my arms defensively as I waited for him to finish informing me what the heck had happened.

"It was Georgia," he told me barely above a whisper in a voice laced with pain. I felt my chest tighten instantly and a hot flush course through my veins. As I stood frozen in disbelief, I barely heard him say he was so sorry for not looking after her properly. "It was my fault she even came," he told me chocked up with guilt, "I asked her to come along. She wouldn't even have been there if it wasn't for me. I should have kept a closer eye on her, but she seemed so confident. I shouldn't have let her come with us. She wasn't supposed to be there. But she was so excited about going down the wire. You should have seen her, no fear, she even did a somersault of the top of the tower! I couldn't have done that. Nobody else even tried to do one. She changed her harness to do it. Maybe that's what went wrong. Although it looked like she knew what she was doing. I don't think it was the first time she'd done it."

"Zeke!" Recognising he was babbling almost incessantly I grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently, "snap out of it!" I knew I was being slightly hypocritical as I was not exactly handling the news well either, it had taken me longer than I would care to admit to regain awareness after learning of her fate. He regained his composure slightly as I yelled in his face and I found myself asking him questions before thinking what I was saying. "What do you mean she knew what she was doing? Why did she change her harness?" I realised in that moment that, even after a rocky start, I had grown fond of my troublesome student and I needed to know what had happened to her. If what Zeke said amidst his rambling was true, then why did something go wrong? "Tell me exactly what happened, from the moment you asked her to join you," I demanded rigidly.

Zeke went on to tell me exactly what had happened to her up until he lost sight of her going down the wire, at which point he paused for seemingly no reason. When he didn't continue I gave him a curious look along with a "carry on" motion with my hand, to which he bit his lip slightly. "Well, after that I don't know what happened really. She never made it to the ground and because she was so excited she practically demanded to be first, so that was the last I saw of her."

"So nobody knows what happened? She just vanished?" I had gotten past the point of being polite and was just bluntly asking questions at this point, getting more and more impatient as time went on.

"Kind of." I glared at him wholly unamused to get him to speak faster, which worked well as he hurriedly continued. "Everyone who had done it before went down first to catch the rest of us when we got to the end, and they said they saw her come in – they definitely heard her yelling happily. A few of them told me that they saw her coming in from a distance, and that she was absolutely there. But then as she got closer Amy and Mike swear on their lives that they saw her detach from her harness and start falling. According to the others they screamed in fear as well, so they really did see something fall - even if it wasn't actually her. The others said it was too dark to really tell if she was in the harness before Mike and Amy said they saw her fall, so I don't know if that means she fell earlier or if that really was her. The thing is as I said, we never found her body, even though her harness came to a stop above them and it was totally empty."

I took a moment to process all of the confusing information Zeke had told me before I carefully constructed a decent response - I knew if I didn't, anything I said wouldn't make any sense. "So, none of you know exactly what happened… I take it you went back to look for her, or her body if she did indeed die?" He nodded vigorously, "and found no trace?" the nodding changed to shaking from side to side so fast I wondered briefly if he hurt himself in doing so. I sighed deeply as I mentally assessed the situation - as much as I wanted to go out there and look for her myself, I knew it would be pointless if all fifteen of them couldn't find any sign of her whereabouts.

"That's everything I know Four, I swear it." I nodded once to show that I believed him, which he briefly registered before running a hand through his hair in frustration as he carried on talking. "I really wish I could tell you more. She was my friend and frankly I can't quite believe she's gone… I feel like I should have looked harder, that I should be able to tell you more. People don't just disappear into thin air!"

I quickly put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and told him solemnly, "you have told me plenty and I'm sure Georgia knows that you did everything you could to look for her. But for now I need you to gather everyone else you were with and tell them you all need to write up a report of what happened, because the leaders are going to want to know. Make sure you write as much detail as you can, given how odd this is."

Zeke nodded in confirmation before spinning around and hurriedly walking off, but he didn't get very far before pausing to turn back to me. "Wait, before I go . . . did you want me to tell Ben and Sally about what happened to Georgia?"

"No, I'll tell them," I replied after hesitating slightly, even if I didn't know absolutely everything that happened I thought it would be best if I told them seeing as I wouldn't end up quite as hysterical as Zeke may. If telling me was so difficult I couldn't imagine how hard it would be for him to tell the pair what had happened to their best friend.

It was too late to wake up the two of them at the time, so I waited until morning and stood leaning against the wall near the door to the initiates dorm. This was not going to be easy and I thought it best if there wasn't an audience when I informed them, so I remained out of sight until they left the dorm.

After receiving some strange looks from a few of the initiates for loitering by their room, I was glad when the pair finally came through the door and immediately pushed off the wall to approach them. "Morning, may I have a word with you both?" The pair exchanged a quick glance before agreeing, I swiftly gestured for the pair to follow me in the opposite direction to the rest of their peers, probably confusing them slightly, and took them along the longer route to breakfast.

"So, why did you want to talk to the both of us?" Ben asked from just behind me not long after we set off, impatient to know what I wanted to tell them. I expected they had already guessed that I wanted to talk about Georgia, given that they hadn't seen her all night or that morning, so wasn't surprised when he spoke up. Unfortunately for him we were still out in the open and I wanted to give the pair some semblance of privacy in case they had a complete melt down.

Thankfully we reached my intended destination shortly afterwards and stopped us inside the fairly deep alcove before turning to face them. Regrettably, I only thought to school my features after they had caught sight of my face, and so two pairs of eyes widened in surprise as their faces paled dramatically. "Where is Georgia? What's going on?" Sally demanded soberly before I could even open my mouth to begin explaining why I summoned them, confirming my suspicion about their foresight of the topic of conversation.

"She's dead," I announced as gently as I could after deciding to be slightly blunt about telling them, "I'm so sorry." I watched as their expressions shifted from shock to disbelief as the information slowly sank in and they came to terms with the fact their friend was gone.

"Wha – she – you – that can't be true," Ben exclaimed desperately, "tell us the truth!" He was glaring at me heatedly in an attempt to extract the "truth" out of me when Sally gently laid a hand on his shoulder and murmured something to him that I couldn't hear from where I was standing. Whatever she said managed to calm him down as his next question was almost calm, even if his voiced cracked with emotion, "how did she . . . tell us what happened to her."

The pair listened to me attentively, not even interrupting me to ask any questions, as I told them absolutely everything I knew about the events that occurred last night. My explanation was more articulate than Zeke's had been, but the disjointed nature of the information from multiple points of view meant that I still sounded slightly incoherent as I recounted the tale. Once I had finished there was a moments silence as they processed the tale just like I had to when I was told – it was hard to get your head around the fact someone just vanished like that.

"Wait, so she could just be missing then?" Sally voiced optimistically as her eyes lit up with hope that she wasn't dead. She started rushing off as she exclaimed urgently, "we **have** to go and look for her!"

"Sally," I caught her arm and brought her to a halt, saying as gently as I could while still being firm, "stop." Pulling her around to face me with my hands on her shoulders, she looked me in the eye as that spark of hope slowly vanished before me and tears welled up in her eyes. "She's gone. They all looked for her for hours afterwards. If she is alive, she doesn't want to be found…" Those tears escaped and trailed lines of sorrow down her cheeks as she shook her head weakly.

At this point Ben stepped in and carefully removed her from my grasp to gently gather her into a comforting hug. She buried her face in his shoulder as she openly wept, her arms wrapping around him when her body began quaking from the intensity of her sobbing. I hoped it wouldn't get any worse, not because I was unsympathetic to her loss but because I had no idea how to comfort or help her. Feeling painfully useless in the situation, I hovered next to them as they both let their emotions loose. This was precisely why I brought them to a secluded area of the building, because I doubt they would have wanted anyone seeing this and privacy was hard to come by among the initiates schedule.

It wasn't long until they had gotten their emotions in check and managed to regain their composure enough to go to lessons – they may not enough time left to go to breakfast by this point unfortunately. They untangled themselves from each other's comforting embrace to face me again, taking a deep breath and standing tall to ensure they stayed strong before heading off.

"Thank you for letting us know so soon, and giving us some privacy when you did," Ben told me solemnly, I didn't think they would be anything but solemn for some time after learning of Georgia's fate – not that I blamed them.

"You are welcome. If you head off now you might make it in time to have some breakfast before your first session, just follow the hallway until you reach the end then turn right and you'll be back on the usual route. Don't worry about being a bit late, I'll cover for you both – but do try and hurry because you don't want to miss anything." Just like that I was back into my usual instructor demeanour, recognising this the pair of friends nodded seriously and followed my instructions hastily.

I trailed after them slowly, not bothering to get any breakfast as I was feeling too nauseous to contemplate eating anything so headed straight for simulation room to get set up for the first initiate. My stomach clenches slightly as I walk when a thought pops into my head before I can stop it – Georgia would have been the first initiate to be tested. If she was still here. They tested the initiates in alphabetical order by surname, she had once told me hers was "Aaronson". My eyes slid closed as I breathed deeply to calm myself.

One of my students was dead.

A student I was supposed to teach and take care of.

My first year as an instructor and I'd lost a student before stage two had even begun. I hoped this wasn't an omen of the years to come, I wasn't a superstitious person but even I knew this was a bad sign. As I continued my way through the corridors I couldn't help but feel I had failed her after assuring her so many times that she would make it to being a fully fledged member of Dauntless. That I would train her well enough she would make it with ease. She'd had a lot of potential if I was honest. As much as I had disliked and distrusted her in the beginning, it would feel incredibly strange not having her around any more. The annoying woman had wormed her way into my life more than I had realised, with her insisting on going for a run every single evening – a run I had to supervise because everyone else had adamantly refused.

I was so lost in thought that I hardly noticed I had arrived at the simulation room, opening the door I stepped into the dark room and began setting up for the first initiate. As I did do I came to an important decision. Georgia was gone, I had to deal with that. I had to move on. I had to put the past behind me. Even if I had failed her, I could make up for it by preventing it from happening again.

She would leave a hole in the group and I knew the absence of her energetic and quirky nature would be noticed by everyone.

But for now, I have initiates to train.

* * *

Georgia: *dramatically* Dun, dun, dun! So yeah, thats what happened after I bailed, I'd always been curious about that... He didn't tell me anything else so I'm not sure about anything else, I **miiiight** not have told him who I really was and that I was alive...so they probably think I died or something. I dunno, anyway thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!


	15. Next part is posted

Hey everyone, just to let everyone that followed know that the next part of the story can be found under "So, magic is a thing..." on my page!


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